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Quotes about thinking

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The Genius of Poetry must work out its own salvation in a man: It cannot be matured by law and precept, but by sensation and watchfulness in itself.
John Keats1795–1821To James Hessey (9 October 1818)
- Genius
- Poetry
The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.
B. F. Skinner1904–1990Contingencies of Reinforcement: A Theoretical Analysis (1969)
- Technology
Only a crisis⁠—actual or perceived⁠—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.
Milton Friedman1912–2006Capitalism and Freedom (1962), preface to the 1982 edition, p. ix
- Change
- Ideas
A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. It has come to you over a new route, by a new and express train of associations.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.1809–1894The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858), Ch. 1
- Ideas
Mathematical reasoning may be regarded rather schematically as the exercise of a combination of two faculties, which we may call intuition and ingenuity.
Alan Turing1912–1954“Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals,” section 11: The purpose of ordinal logics (1938), published in Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, series 2, vol. 45 (1939)
- Science
Reason is a particle of the Creator’s divinity. When we use it with a spirit of humility and justice we are certain to please the Giver of that precious gift.
Giacomo Casanova1725–1798Memoirs of J. Casanova de Seingalt (1894)
- God
Now the world in general doesn’t know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger.
W. Somerset Maugham1874–1965Great Novelists and Their Novels (1948)
- Anger
- Ideas
Most of the things we do, we do for no better reason than that our fathers have done them or our neighbors do them, and the same is true of a larger part than what we suspect of what we think.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.1841–1935‘The Path of the Law’, address at Boston University School of Law (8 January 1897)
I am far more provoked at being thought foolish by foolish people, than pleased at being thought sensible by sensible people; and the average proportion of the numbers of each is not to my advantage.
John Ruskin1819–1900Fors Clavigera, letter xxxvii, (1 January 1874)
- Intelligence
I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.
Alan Turing1912–1954Computing Machinery and Intelligence (1950), p. 442.
- Computers
If someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?
Sam Harrisborn 1967Sam Harris, “Is the Foundation of Morality Natural or Supernatural? – William Lane Craig vs. Sam Harris, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, United States – April 2011
- Debate
To apply oneself to great inventions, starting from the smallest beginnings, is no task for ordinary minds; to divine that wonderful arts lie hid behind trivial and childish things is a conception for superhuman talents.
Galileo Galilei1564–1642Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632)
- Genius
- Ideas
At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question.
George Orwell1903–1950“The Freedom of the Press”, unused preface to Animal Farm (1945), published in Times Literary Supplement (15 September 1972)
- Ideas
Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.
George Orwell1903–1950Review of A Coat of Many Colours: Occasional Essays by Herbert Read, Poetry Quarterly (Winter 1945)
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