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Quotes about thinking

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It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.
Arthur Conan Doyle1859–1930The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1891–1892), A Scandal in BohemiaIn context
- Facts
Great and strange ideas transcending experience often have less effect upon men and women than smaller, more tangible considerations.
H. G. Wells1866–1946The Invisible Man (1897), Chapter XIn context
- Ideas
All men, however highly educated, retain some superstitious inklings.
H. G. Wells1866–1946The Invisible Man (1897), Chapter XVIIIn context
- Education
Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well-informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid.
Jane Austen1775–1817Northanger Abbey (1817), Chapter 14In context
- Intelligence
- Knowledge
At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done⁠—then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago.
Frances Hodgson Burnett1849–1924The Secret Garden (1911), Chapter XXVIIIn context
- Change
- Ideas
One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts⁠—just mere thoughts⁠—are as powerful as electric batteries⁠—as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body.
Frances Hodgson Burnett1849–1924The Secret Garden (1911), Chapter XXVIIIn context
- Health
Where you tend a rose, my lad,
A thistle cannot grow.
Frances Hodgson Burnett1849–1924The Secret Garden (1911), Chapter XXVIIIn context
- Nature
I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness⁠—a real thorough-going illness.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky1821–1881Notes from Underground (1864), Part I: Underground, Chapter IIIn context
It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night.
Edgar Allan Poe1809–1849The Tell-Tale Heart (1843)In context
- Ideas
How can any man, whose eyes
Are wholesome, seek to rear his children wise
Beyond men’s wont? Much helplessness in arts
Of common life, and in their townsmen’s hearts
Envy deep-set … so much their learning brings!
Come unto fools with knowledge of new things,
They deem it vanity, not knowledge.
Euripides481–407 BCMedea (431 BC), Part 1, spoken by MedeaIn context
I am a woman, but I’m not a fool.
And what of natural intelligence I own
Has been filled out with the remembered precepts
My father and the city-elders taught me.
Aristophanes446–386 BCLysistrata (411 BC), spoken by LysistrataIn context
- Intelligence
- Women
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Aesop620–564 BCAesop’s Fables (6th century BC), The Kites and the Swans – The Monkey and the DolphinIn context
- Ideas
- Intelligence