Quotes about thinking
552 quotes from 279 people
Skill is successfully walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. Intelligence is not trying.
I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.
John Locke1632–1704An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), Book 1, Ch. 3, sec. 3
Euripides481–407 BCPhoenissae (c. 409 BC), l. 392 (tr. Elizabeth Wyckoff, 1958)I prefer rogues to imbeciles, because they sometimes take a rest.
Jonathan Swift1667–1745Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)There is nothing easier than lopping off heads and nothing harder than developing ideas.
Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new at all.
Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.
Marcel Proust1871–1922Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol. VII: The Past Recaptured (1927), Ch. III: “An Afternoon Party at the House of the Princesse de Guermantes”- John Locke1632–1704An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), Dedicatory epistle, as quoted in
Any mental activity is easy if it need not take reality into account.
Fortune has rarely condescended to be the companion of genius.
IDIsaac D'Israeli1766–1848Curiosities of Literature, Poverty of the Learned
