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Quotes about thinking

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It’s extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it’s just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome.
Joseph Conrad1857–1924Lord Jim (1900), Chapter 13In context
- Life & Death
Frankly, it is not my words that I mistrust but your minds. I could be eloquent were I not afraid you fellows had starved your imaginations to feed your bodies. I do not mean to be offensive; it is respectable to have no illusions⁠—and safe⁠—and profitable⁠—and dull.
Joseph Conrad1857–1924Lord Jim (1900), Chapter 21In context
It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.
Arthur Conan Doyle1859–1930A Study in Scarlet (1887), Part I, Chapter IIIIn context
- Facts
They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains,” he remarked with a smile. “It’s a very bad definition, but it does apply to detective work.
Arthur Conan Doyle1859–1930A Study in Scarlet (1887), Part I, Chapter IIIIn context
- Genius
- Work
One’s ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature
Arthur Conan Doyle1859–1930A Study in Scarlet (1887), Part I, Chapter VIn context
- Ideas
- Nature
When a fact appears to be opposed to a long train of deductions, it invariably proves to be capable of bearing some other interpretation.
Arthur Conan Doyle1859–1930A Study in Scarlet (1887), Part I, Chapter VIIIn context
- Facts
In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backwards.
Arthur Conan Doyle1859–1930A Study in Scarlet (1887), Part II: The Country of the Saints, Chapter VIIIn context
There are fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason analytically.
Arthur Conan Doyle1859–1930A Study in Scarlet (1887), Part II: The Country of the Saints, Chapter VIIIn context
- Intelligence
My mind,” he said, “rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation.
Arthur Conan Doyle1859–1930The Sign of the Four (1890), Chapter IIn context
- Work
I never guess. It is a shocking habit,⁠—destructive to the logical faculty.
Arthur Conan Doyle1859–1930The Sign of the Four (1890), Chapter IIn context
The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning. I assure you that the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money, and the most repellant man of my acquaintance is a philanthropist who has spent nearly a quarter of a million upon the London poor.
Arthur Conan Doyle1859–1930The Sign of the Four (1890), Chapter IIIn context
- Character
- Emotion
I never make exceptions. An exception disproves the rule.
Arthur Conan Doyle1859–1930The Sign of the Four (1890), Chapter IIIn context
How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?
Arthur Conan Doyle1859–1930The Sign of the Four (1890), Chapter VIIn context
- Truth & Lies
Winwood Reade is good upon the subject,” said Holmes. “He remarks that, while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant.
Arthur Conan Doyle1859–1930The Sign of the Four (1890), Chapter XIn context
- Science
You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear.
Arthur Conan Doyle1859–1930The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1891–1892), A Scandal in BohemiaIn context