Famously Said Random quote

Quotes about thinking

552 quotes from 279 people

Most readBy personPage 31 of 37

I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality.
Henry David Thoreau1817–1862Life Without Principle (1863), p. 492
There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite.
Jorge Luis Borges1899–1986“Avatars of the Tortoise” (1939), collected in Discussion (1957 edition)
- Ideas
- Philosophy
Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end.
Neil Gaimanborn 1960American Gods (2001), Ch. 3
- Ideas
- Religion
Ideas are like fish.
If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper.
David Lynch1946–2025Catching the Big Fish (2006), Introduction, p. 1
- Ideas
Have no respect whatsoever for authority; forget who said it and instead look what he starts with, where he ends up, and ask yourself, “Is it reasonable?”
Richard Feynman1918–1988“What Do You Care What Other People Think?”, p. 28-29
- Advice
Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn’t mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.
Kurt Vonnegut1922–2007Hocus Pocus (1990)
- Intelligence
- Pride
It seems to me that if there is some infinite being who wants us to think alike he would have made us alike.
Robert G. Ingersoll1833–1899The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)
- God
One of my oldest crusades is against the distinction between thought and feeling… which is really the basis of all anti-intellectual views: the heart and the head, thinking and feeling, fantasy and judgment.
Susan Sontag1933–2004“Susan Sontag: The Rolling Stone Interview” with Jonathan Cott (1978; published 4 October 1979)
- Emotion
A mind that has confronted ruin for years
Is half or more a ruined mind.
Wendell Berry1934–2026“Sabbaths 2001”, in Given (2005)
Suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away.
Barack Obamaborn 1961A New Beginning (June 2009)
- Freedom
- Ideas
Mandela demonstrated that action and ideas are not enough. No matter how right, they must be chiseled into law and institutions.
Barack Obamaborn 1961Eulogy of Nelson Mandela (December 2013)
- Ideas
- Laws
It is characteristic of the unlearned that they are forever proposing something which is old, and because it has recently come to their own attention, supposing it to be new.
Calvin Coolidge1872–1933From ‘Address at Holy Cross’ (25 June 1919), published in Have Faith In Massachusetts: A Collection of Speeches and Messages (2nd Ed.), Coolidge, Houghton Mifflin, p. 231.
- Ideas
- Knowledge
If you can’t think because you can’t chew, try a banana.
Lee Kuan Yew1923–2015Responding to a BBC reporter who suggested that Singapore’s draconian laws (including the ban on chewing gum) could stifle the people’s creativity (2000).
- Clever Jabs
Songs can be Trojan horses, taking charged ideas and sneaking past the ego’s defenses and into the open mind.
John Mayerborn 1977Esquire magazine (November 1, 2004)
- Ideas
- Music
Sometimes I wish I wasn’t as conscious as I am. It would be so much easier.
River Phoenix1970–1993Premiere (1988)