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Quotes about thinking

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When a language dies, so much more than words are lost. Language is the dwelling place of ideas that do not exist anywhere else. It is a prism through which to see the world.
Robin Wall Kimmererborn 1953Braiding Sweetgrass (2013), p. 258
- Ideas
Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions.
Martin Luther King Jr.1929–1968Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 1: A tough mind and a tender heart
Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
Martin Luther King Jr.1929–1968Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 1: A tough mind and a tender heart
A mind that has understood the whole movement of thought becomes extraordinarily quiet, absolutely silent. That silence is the beginning of the new.
Jiddu Krishnamurti1895–19866th Public Talk, Saanen (28 July 1970) ‘The Mechanical Activity of Thought” in The Impossible Question (1972) Part I, Ch. 6
The very nature of intelligence is sensitivity, and this sensitivity is love.
Jiddu Krishnamurti1895–1986Letters to the Schools (1981, 1985), Vol. I, p. 113
- Intelligence
- Love
The history of human thought recalls the swinging of a pendulum which takes centuries to swing. After a long period of slumber comes a moment of awakening.
Peter Kropotkin1842–1921Anarchist Morality (1890)
- History
Vladimir Ilyich, your concrete actions are completely unworthy of the ideas you pretend to hold.
Peter Kropotkin1842–1921Letter to Vladimir Lenin (21 December 1920); as quoted in Peter Kropotkin: From Prince to Rebel (1990) by George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic, p. 426
- Ideas
Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.
LLaozi580–501 BCTao Te Ching, Ch. 33, tr. Stephen Mitchell (1988)
It’s too bad that stupidity isn’t painful.
Anton LaVey1930–1997The Nine Satanic Sins (1987)
- Comedy
- Intelligence
It is of the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on.
Ursula K. Le Guin1929–2018The Dispossessed (1974), Chapter 3 (p. 72)
- Ideas
Do not deny the classical approach, simply as a reaction, or you will have created another pattern and trapped yourself there.
Bruce Lee1940–1973Tao of Jeet Kune Do (1975), p. 25
Those who are really convinced that they have made progress in science would not demand freedom for the new views to continue side by side with the old, but the substitution of the new views for the old.
Vladimir Lenin1870–1924What is to be Done? (1902)
- Ideas
- Science
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
There is a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
Oscar Levant1906–1972
- Genius
One must be very naïve or dishonest to imagine that men choose their beliefs independently of their situation.
Claude Lévi-Strauss1908–2009Tristes Tropiques (1955), Chapter 16: Markets, p. 148