Famously Said Random quote

Quotes about thinking

552 quotes from 279 people

Most readBy personPage 20 of 37

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
Gustave Flaubert1821–1880Letters to Madame Louise Colet, 13 August 1846
- Happiness
- Intelligence
Burke is so great because, almost alone in England, he brings thought to bear upon politics, he saturates politics with thought.
Matthew Arnold1822–1888The Functions of Criticism at the Present Time (1864)
- Politics
A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So he loses touch with reality, and lives in a world of illusion.
Alan Watts1915–1973Alan Watts Teaches Meditation (1992)
One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius; and the feminine situation has up to the present rendered this becoming practically impossible.
Simone de Beauvoir1908–1986The Second Sex (1949), Bk. I, Pt. 2, Ch. 8: Since the French Revolution: the Job and the Vote, p. 133
- Genius
- Women
When one compares the talents one has with those of a Leibniz, one is tempted to throw away one’s books and go die quietly in the dark of some forgotten corner.
Denis Diderot1713–1784Oeuvres complètes, vol. 7, p. 678
- Genius
Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.
Karl Popper1902–1994Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (1972)
- Ideas
Genius is present in every age, but the men carrying it within them remain benumbed unless extraordinary events occur to heat up and melt the mass so that it flows forth.
Denis Diderot1713–1784On Dramatic Poetry (1758)
- Genius
We are most likely to get angry and excited in our opposition to some idea when we ourselves are not quite certain of our own position, and are inwardly tempted to take the other side.
Thomas Mann1875–1955Buddenbrooks [Buddenbrooks: Verfall einer Familie, Roman] (1901). Pt 8, Ch. 2
- Anger
- Ideas
In the judgment of the most competent living mathematicians, Fräulein Noether was the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began.
Albert Einstein1879–1955Obituary for Emmy Noether (1935)
- Genius
- Women
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
H. P. Lovecraft1890–1937The Call of Cthulhu (1926)
- Knowledge
We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.
Doris Lessing1919–2013The Golden Notebook (1962), Paul Tanner, in “Free Women: 1”
- Intelligence
- Truth & Lies
The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought.
Emma Goldman1869–1940Anarchism and Other Essays (1910), “Minorities Versus Majorities”
- Freedom
He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826Letter to Isaac McPherson (1813)
- Ideas
- Knowledge
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.
Abraham Lincoln1809–1865Lincoln’s Second Annual Message to Congress (1862)
- Change
A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic.
Winston Churchill1874–1965“The Defence of Freedom and Peace (The Lights are Going Out)”, radio broadcast to the United States and to London (16 October 1938).
- Ideas
- Power