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Quotes about thinking

552 quotes from 279 people

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I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.
Oliver Cromwell1599–1658Letter to the general assembly of the Church of Scotland (3 August 1650)
Fortune has rarely condescended to be the companion of genius.
IDIsaac D'Israeli1766–1848Curiosities of Literature, Poverty of the Learned
- Genius
- Luck
Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.
IDIsaac D'Israeli1766–1848Curiosities of Literature (1791–1834), Solitude.
- Genius
Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.
IDIsaac D'Israeli1766–1848Curiosities of Literature (1791–1834)
- Genius
- Talking
Ever since the French revolution there has developed a vicious, cretinizing tendency to consider a genius (apart from his work) as a human being more or less the same in every sense as other ordinary mortals.
Salvador Dalí1904–1989Diary of a Genius (1964), p. 1
- Genius
To think is to differ.
Clarence Darrow1857–1938
I am a thing that thinks, that is to say, a thing that doubts, affrims, denies, understands a few things, is ignorant of many things, wills, refrains from willing, and also imagines and senses.
René Descartes1596–1650
I think; therefore I am.
René Descartes1596–1650Le Discours de la Méthode (1637)
Reason is experimental intelligence, conceived after the pattern of science, and used in the creation of social arts; it has something to do. It liberates man from the bondage of the past, due to ignorance and accident hardened into custom. It projects a better future and assists man in its realization.
John Dewey1859–1952
Every thinker puts some portion of an apparently stable world in peril and no one can wholly predict what will emerge in its place.
John Dewey1859–1952Experience and Nature (1925), Ch. VI: Nature, Mind and the Subject
It seems to me that in many ways, ideas have a life of their own. They appear to seize on people and make use of them.
Philip K. Dick1928–1982“Philip K Dick speech (interpreter edited out) in Metz, France, 1977”, ~28:00
- Ideas
Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
Emily Dickinson1830–1886Much Madness is divinest Sense (1890)In context
- Wisdom
‘T is the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur,⁠—you’re straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.
Emily Dickinson1830–1886Much Madness is divinest Sense (1890)In context
- Freedom
When one compares the talents one has with those of a Leibniz, one is tempted to throw away one’s books and go die quietly in the dark of some forgotten corner.
Denis Diderot1713–1784Oeuvres complètes, vol. 7, p. 678
- Genius
Genius is present in every age, but the men carrying it within them remain benumbed unless extraordinary events occur to heat up and melt the mass so that it flows forth.
Denis Diderot1713–1784On Dramatic Poetry (1758)
- Genius