Quotes about thinking
page 14

“I think and think and think, I‘ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.”

Jonathan Safran Foer (1977) Novelist

“The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even — if you will — eccentricity.”

Joseph Brodsky (1940–1996) Russian and American poet and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate

"A Commencement Address" (1984), delivered at Williams College; As quoted in: Robert Inchausti (2014) Thinking through Thomas Merton. p. 110
Context: The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even — if you will — eccentricity. That is, something that can't be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned imposter couldn't be happy with. Something, in other words, that can't be shared, like your own skin: not even by a minority. Evil is a sucker for solidity. It always goes for big numbers, for confident granite, for ideological purity, for drilled armies and balanced sheets. Its proclivity for such things has to do with its innate insecurity, but this realization, again, is of small comfort when Evil triumphs.

Evil

“But I think you have a right to know what it is you’re not being told.”

Terry Pratchett book Wyrd Sisters

Source: Wyrd Sisters

“Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be—in other ages, perhaps.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Age, World, Sad

“Yes; poor Bunbury is a dreadful invalid.
Well, I must say, Algernon, that I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shillyshallying with the question is absurd.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

Question, Time

“Half the time she did things not simply, not for themselves; but to make people think this or that; perfect idiocy she knew for no one was ever for a second taken in.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

People, Time, Perfection

“It’s a good thing when you don’t dare do something if you don’t think it’s right. But it’s not good when you think something’s not right because you don’t dare do it.”

Sigrid Undset (1882–1949) Norwegian writer

Source: The Wreath

“Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

“Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

People

“It was like being in the eye of a hurricane. You'd wake up in a concert and think "Wow how did I get here?”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

“Be what I think? But I think of being so many things!”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Source: Fernando Pessoa and Co.: Selected Poems

“Tis better people think you a fool, then open your mouth and erase all doubt.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Variously attributed to Lincoln, Elbert Hubbard, Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin and Socrates
Misattributed
Variant: It is better to be silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.

People, Fools

“We are living in an interminable succession of absurdities imposed by the myopic logic of short-term thinking.”

Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997) French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and …

Success

“If I had another face, do you think I would wear this one?”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Attributed in Jean Dresden Grambs (1959), Abraham Lincoln Through the Eyes of High School Youth
Misattributed
Variant: If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?

“I think, that if I touched the earth,
It would crumble;
It is so sad and beautiful,
So tremulously like a dream.”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

Sadness, Beauty, Dreams

“Some nights, alone, he thinks of her, and some nights, alone, she thinks of him. Some night these thoughts, separated by miles and time zones, occur at the same objective moment, and Ray and Mirabelle are connected without ever knowing it.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

Time, Night

“See?" he said, with an unholy amount of glee. "I hardly broke any laws at all. I should drive more often."
"No. Trust me, you shouldn't," Eve said. "Think of all the little old people and the children.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Bite Club

Children, People, Law

“Science can teach us, and I think our hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supporters, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make the world a fit place to live.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"Fear, the Foundation of Religion"
1920s, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
Source: Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
Context: Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing – fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by the help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hears can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.

World, Support, Effort, Science

“A part of my depression lies, I think, in my unanswered question: Where is home? I feel a sense, always, of trying to find my way back to a place that doesn't exist.”

Sally Brampton (1955–2016) British writer

Source: Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression

Way, Feeling, Home, Question

“It seems to me a fundamental dishonesty, and a fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity to hold a belief because you think it's useful and not because you think it's true.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

“Why does Samuel Butler say, 'Wise men never say what they think of women'? Wise men never say anything else apparently.”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own

Women, Men

“I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Collected Poems

Dreams, Kiss

“A sense of calm came over me. More and more often I found myself thinking, "This is where I belong. This is what I came into this world to do.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

World, Sense

“The young people think the old people are fools -- but the old people know the young people are fools.”

Agatha Christie Murder at the Vicarage

Source: Murder at the Vicarage

People, Fools

“Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1950s, Unpopular Essays (1950)

en.wikiquote.org - Bertrand Russell / Quotes / 1950s / Unpopular Essays (1950)

Fear

“We labour at our daily work more ardently and thoughtlessly than is necessary to sustain our life because it is even more necessary not to have leisure to stop and think. Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself.”

Friedrich Nietzsche Untimely Meditations

Source: Untimely Meditations

Life, Universe

“Never let yourself be diverted, either by what you wish to believe, or what you think could have beneficent social effects if it were believed; but look only and solely at what are the facts.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Response to the question "Suppose Lord Russell, this film were to be looked at by our descendants, like a dead sea scroll in a thousand years time. What would you think it's worth telling that generation about the life you've lived and the lessons you've learned from it?" in a BBC interview on "Face to Face" (1959) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3aPkzHpT8M 1950s Context: When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only: What are the facts, and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted, either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed; but look only and solely at what are the facts. Context: I should like to say two things. One intellectual and one moral. The intellectual thing I should want to say to them is this: "When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only: What are the facts, and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted, either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed; but look only and solely at what are the facts." That is the intellectual thing that I should wish to say. The moral thing I should wish to say to them is very simple; I should say: "Love is wise – Hatred is foolish." In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other. We have to learn to put up with the fact, that some people say things we don't like. We can only live together in that way. But if we are to live together, and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance which is absolutely vital, to the continuation of human life on this planet.

“Did you ever think that in a past life Alec was an old woman with ninety cats who was always yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off her lawn? Because I do”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Life, Cats, Past

“Thus went my first Court Day.
I think I'm going to puke.”

Tamora Pierce book Terrier

Source: Terrier

“A good plan isn't one where someone wins, it's where nobody thinks they've lost.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

“There's a door."
"Where does it go?"
"It stays where it is, I think.”

Terry Pratchett book Eric

Source: Eric

“I want to tell you, don't marry suffering. Some people do. They get married to it, and sleep and eat together, just as husband and wife. If they go with joy they think it's adultery.”

Saul Bellow book Seize the Day

Source: Seize the Day

People, Sleep, Suffering, Joy

“What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure - as a mere automaton of duty?”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Source: The Anti-Christ/Ecce Homo/Twilight of the Idols/Other Writings

Pleasure, Feeling, Personality

“I am glad that the country world…retains a power to use our English tongue. It is a part of its sense of reality, of its vocabulary of definite terms, and of its habit of earthly common sense. I find this country writing an excellent corrective of the urban vocabulary of abstractions and of the emotion disguised as thinking which abstractions and humbug have loosed upon the world. May there always be such things as a door, a milk pail, and a loaf of bread, and words to do them honor.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

World, Reality, Sense, Parting

“[T]hus one should not think that desire is repressed, for the simple reason that the law is what constitutes both desire and the lack on which it is predicated. Where there is desire, the power relation is already present: an illusion, then, to denounce this relation for a repression exerted after the event.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Source: The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction

Law

“…to know how to think with emotions and to feel with intellect…”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Feeling

“You are stronger than you seem,
Braver than you believe,
and smarter than you think you are.”

A.A. Milne book Winnie-the-Pooh

Variant: You are braver than you believe,
Stronger than you seem,
And smarter than you think(:
Source: Winnie-the-Pooh

Motivational, Friendship, Relationship, Cute

“MRS ALLONBY I adore them. The clever people never listen, and the stupid people never talk.
HESTER I think the stupid people talk a great deal.
MRS ALLONBY Ah, I never listen!”

Oscar Wilde A Woman of No Importance

Source: A Woman of No Importance

People, Stupidity

“I'm not against sentimentality. I think you need it. I mean, I don't think you get a true picture of people without it in writing… It's a kind of poetry, it's an emotional poetry, and, to bring it back to the literary scene, I don't think anything is true that doesn't have it, that doesn't have poetry in it.”

Nelson Algren (1909–1981) American novelist, short story writer

People

“The days are stacked against what we think we are.”

Jim Harrison (1937–2016) American novelist, poet, essayist

Source: The Road Home

“Rincewind had always been happy to think of himself as a racist. The One Hundred Meters, the Mile, the Marathon -- he'd run them all.”

Terry Pratchett book The Last Continent

Source: The Last Continent

Happiness

“The world doesn't hate you as much as you think it does.”

Kōji Suzuki (1957) Japanese writer

Source: Birthday

Hate, World

“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”

Charles Mackay book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

Source: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841)

Men, Sense, Madness

“I don't think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we shrink from the immensity of the purpose we are here for.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

Interview with Divina Infusino in American Way (15 June 1995)

Life

“Everyone has gods. You just don't think they're gods.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: The Color of Magic

God

“You think that your laws correct evil - they only increase it. There is but one way to end evil - by rendering good for evil to all men without distinction.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: Christians and the Law-Courts

Men, Law, Way, Evil

“It's been months since I last wrote. I've lived in a state of mental slumber, leading the life of someone else. I've felt, very often, a vicarious happiness. I haven't existed. I've been someone else. I've lived without thinking.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Life, Happiness

“To speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Lady Bracknell, Act III
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Marriage, People

“What is this thing called life? I believe
That the earth and the stars too, and the whole glittering universe, and rocks on the mountains have life,
Only we do not call it so--I speak of the life
That oxidizes fats and proteins and carbo-
Hydrates to live on, and from that chemical energy
Makes pleasure and pain, wonder, love, adoration, hatred and terror: how do these things grow
From a chemical reaction?
I think they were here already, I think the rocks
And the earth and the other planets, and the stars and the galaxies
have their various consciousness, all things are conscious;
But the nerves of an animal, the nerves and brain
Bring it to focus; the nerves and brain are like a burning-glass
To concentrate the heat and make it catch fire:
It seems to us martyrs hotter than the blazing hearth
From which it came. So we scream and laugh, clamorous animals
Born howling to die groaning: the old stones in the dooryard
Prefer silence; but those and all things have their own awareness,
As the cells of a man have; they feel and feed and influence each other, each unto all,
Like the cells of a man's body making one being,
They make one being, one consciousness, one life, one God.”

Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) American poet

Source: The Selected Poetry

Love, Life, God, Pain

“If you think you are big, you become small. If you know you are nothing, you become unlimited. That’s the beauty of being a human being.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Pebbles Of Wisdom

Beauty

“Sometimes I think it is my mission to bring faith to the faithless, and doubt to the faithful.”

Paul Tillich (1886–1965) German-American theologian and philosopher

Faith

“Humanists recognize that it is only when people feel free to think for themselves, using reason as their guide, that they are best capable of developing values that succeed in satisfying human needs and serving human interests.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

People, Feeling

“If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

Love, Life, Death, People

“Clown: Good Madonna, why mournest thou?
Olivia: Good Fool, for my brother's death.
Clown:I think his soul is in hell, Madonna.
Olivia:I know his soul is in heaven, Fool.
Clown: The more fool, Madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul being in heaven.”

William Shakespeare Twelfth Night

Source: Twelfth Night

Death, Fools, Soul, Hell

“My mind and gut are never simpatico: Every time I think somebody likes me, she doesn't; every time I think somebody doesn't like me, she does. This has never changed and I'm certain it never will.”

Chuck Klosterman book Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Source: Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Change, Time

“Those who still think that listening isn’t an art should see if they can do it half as well.”

Michael Ende book Momo

Source: Momo

Art

“I don't know when we'll see each other again or what the world will be like when we do. We may both have seen many horrible things. But I will think of you every time I need to be reminded that there is beauty and goodness in the world.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

World, Beauty, Time

“Don't join the book burners. Don't think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book, as long as that document does not offend our own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

Remarks at the Dartmouth College Commencement Exercises http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/all_about_ike/quotes.html#censorship (14 June 1953) 1950s

Books, Idea, Reading

“You are more to me than any of them has any idea; you are the atmosphere of beauty through which I see life; you are the incarnation of all lovely things… I think of you day and night. ~ Letter to Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Love, Life, Beauty, Idea

“Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it is the sickening grammar that they use.”

Mark Twain book A Tramp Abroad

A Tramp Abroad (1880)
Context: You may say a cat uses good grammar. Well, a cat does -- but you let a cat get excited once; you let a cat get to pulling fur with another cat on a shed, nights, and you'll hear grammar that will give you the lockjaw. Ignorant people think it's the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it's the sickening grammar they use.

People, Cats, Fight

“Right now I’m having amnesia and déjà vu at the same time. I think I’ve forgotten this before.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Time

“tell me what you think it means.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

“And just when you’d think [humans] were more malignant than ever Hell could be, they occasionally showed more grace than Heaven ever dreamed of.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Dreams, Hell

“I think I summed up my attitude to philosophy when I said: philosophy ought really to be written only as a poetic composition.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value

“When I was a boy a farmer's wife who lived five miles from our village had great fame as a faith-doctor—that was what she called herself. Sufferers came to her from all around, and she laid her hand upon them and said, "Have faith—it is all that is necessary," and they went away well of their ailments. She was not a religious woman, and pretended to no occult powers. She said that the patient's faith in her did the work. Several times I saw her make immediate cures of severe toothaches. My mother was the patient. In Austria there is a peasant who drives a great trade in this sort of industry, and has both the high and the low for patients. He gets into prison every now and then for practising without a diploma, but his business is as brisk as ever when he gets out, for his work is unquestionably successful and keeps his reputation high. In Bavaria there is a man who performed so many great cures that he had to retire from his profession of stage-carpentering in order to meet the demand of his constantly increasing body of customers. He goes on from year to year doing his miracles, and has become very rich. He pretends to no religious helps, no supernatural aids, but thinks there is something in his make-up which inspires the confidence of his patients, and that it is this confidence which does the work, and not some mysterious power issuing from himself.”

Mark Twain Christian Science

Source: Christian Science (1907), Ch. 4

Faith, Confidence, Boy, Business

“Later I had two green ones [alligator pears] — not so perfect. I painted them several times [c. 1920] when the men [American modernist artists, a. o. Marsden Hartley ] didn't think much of what I was doing. They were all discussing Paul Cézanne, with long involved remarks about the 'plastic quality' of his form and colour. I was an outsider. My colour and form were not acceptable. It had nothing to do with Cézanne or anything else. I didn't understand what they were talking about why one colour was better than another... Years later when I finally got to Cézanne's Mont Sainte-Victoire in the south of France, I remember sitting there thinking, 'How could they attach all those analytical remarks to anything he did with that mountain?”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

All those entire words piled on top of that poor little mountain seemed too much.
1970 - 1986, Some Memories of Drawings (1976)

Men, Mountain, Understanding, Time

“[on becoming an artist] It is my profession, yes [ to be an artist] but a calling.. that a little bit pathetic, a little bit bombastic. I think it was much more natural... I Thought – when I was a child – the only method to be not in the world but outside of the world is to be an artist. I feel me outside, yes..”

Anselm Kiefer (1945) German painter and sculptor

n.p.
Tim Marlow joins Anselm Kiefer to discuss his work' - 2005

World, Feeling, Nature

“Modern scientists and so-called scholars think that there are no living entities on planets other than this one. Recently they have said that they have gone to the Moon but did not find any living entities there. But Srimad-Bhagavatam and the other Vedic literatures do not agree with this foolish conception.”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Srimad Bhagavatam, Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1999. Canto 7, Chapter 14, verse 36, purport. Vedabase http://www.vedabase.com/en/sb/7/14/36 Quotes from Books: Loving God, Quotes from Books: Regression of Science

Literature

“People come to Los Angeles and sell their soul every day. It’s sad. Here, the mentality is that everyone has a price. But I say no – no money can buy my soul. I’ve had so many offers that I didn’t think were proper and I’d say sorry, I don’t need it. I didn’t want to work my butt off and not be happy. I’ll always choose happiness and life over all the money in the world. Across my entire career, I had respect in the industry, because I was the one who never sold out.”

Fabio Lanzoni (1961) Italian model, actor and author

Fabio: confessions of the original male supermodel https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2015/jul/15/fabio-confessions-original-male-supermodel (July 15, 2015)

Life, Money, Happiness, People

“To [aunt] Marie Hill,
Dearest
Why do you tempt me? I really cannot. It's impossible! Be happy? The only thought I have in my mind is to immerse myself in my art, to merge completely with it until I can begin to express what I really feel – and after that to be consumed even more by it. Even if I wanted to, I could not leave here [Worpswede]… I want to live here. I want to 'live' – and develop further as a person and as an artist… Can you understand this? I think you can. And do you approve? I hope so. In any case, I can't do any different..”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

In a letter to her aunt Mary Hill, from Worpswede, June 1899; as quoted in Paula Modersohn-Becker – The Letters and Journals, ed: Günther Busch & Lotten von Reinken; (transl, A. Wensinger & C. Hoey; Taplinger); Publishing Company, New York, 1983, p. 135
1899

Happiness, Hope, Art, Feeling

“Jay's favorite line: "Dog, in due time"
Now he look at me, like "Damn, dog, you where I am"
A hip hop legend.
I think I died in an accident, cause this must be heaven.”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

Touch the Sky
Lyrics, Late Registration (2005)

Dogs, Time

“If […] the ability to tell right from wrong should turn out to have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to "demand" its exercise from every sane person, no matter how erudite or ignorant, intelligent or stupid, he may happen to be. Kant—in this respect almost alone among the philosophers—was much bothered by the common opinion that philosophy is only for the few, precisely because of its moral implications.”

Hannah Arendt book The Life of the Mind

Source: The Life of the Mind (1971/1978), p. 13.

Stupidity, Exercises, Intelligence, Personality

“I will not sign a 30-day or a 60-day or a 90-day extension. That is just not an acceptable approach. And if we think it’s going to be hard -- if we think it’s hard now, imagine how these guys are going to be thinking six months from now in the middle of election season where they’re all up. It’s not going to get easier. It’s going to get harder. So we might as well do it now -- pull off the Band-Aid; eat our peas. Now is the time to do it. If not now, when?”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Regarding stopgap measures for the federal budget, White House press conference (11 July 2011) http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/07/11/press-conference-president 2011, Remarks on the economy (July 2011)

Guy, Imagination, Time, Season

“God thinks in the geniuses, dreams in the poets, and sleeps in the other people.”

Peter Altenberg (1859–1919) Austrian writer and poet

Gott denkt in den Genies, träumt in den Dichtern und schläft in den übrigen Menschen.
Der Nachlass von Peter Altenberg, p. 20

God, People, Dreams, Sleep

“…when I had gone through the whole, and saw what a plain, simple, reason able thing Christianity was, suited to all conditions and capacities; and in the morality of it now, with divine authority, established into a legible law, so far surpassing all that philosophy and human reason had attained to, or could possibly make effectual to all degrees of man kind; I was flattered to think it might be of some use in the world; especially to those, who thought either that there was no need of revelation at all, or that the revelation of our Saviour required the belief of such articles for salvation, which the settled notions, and their way of reasoning in some, and want of understanding in others, made impossible to them. Upon these two topics the objections seemed to turn, which were with most assurance made by deists, against Christianity; but against Christianity misunderstood. It seemed to me, that there needed no more to show them the weakness of their exceptions, but to lay plainly before them the doctrine of our Saviour and his apostles, as delivered in the scriptures, and not as taught by the several sects of Christians.”

John Locke (1632–1704) English philosopher and physician

Preface to the Reader
The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695)

World, Law, Way, Understanding

“The last thing I want to turn into is a fat Hollywood jerk. I was brought up without much money and I was happy. I don't think that I will strive for money or success and end up greedy or big-headed. That only leads to unhappiness. I can still be down-to-earth and do this job as long as I enjoy it.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm

Money, Happiness, Jerk, Success

“To be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars- to be satisfied with your possessions but not content with yourself until you have made the best of them- to despise nothing in the world except falsehood and meanness, and to fear nothing except cowardice- to be governed by you admirations rather than by your disgusts- to covet nothing that is your neighbors except his kindness of heart and gentleness of manners- to think seldom of your enemies, often of your friends, and every day of Christ; to spend as much time as you can in God's out-of doors- these are the little guideposts on the footpaths to peace.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

Footpaths to Peace.

Love, Life, God, World

“A strong pursuit, give no time for the enemy to think, take advantage of victory, uproot him, cut off his escape route.”

Alexander Suvorov (1730–1800) Russian military commander

Quoted in V. Ye. Savkin, "Basic Principles of Operational Art and Tactics," 1972.

Strong, Time, Victory

“Well, children, when there is so much racket there be must something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the Negroes of the South and the women of the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?”

Sojourner Truth (1797–1883) African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist

Sojourner Truth, as quoted in The Harbrace Guide to Writing, Concise, p. 50, by Cheryl Glenn. Editorial Cengage Learning, 2011. ISBN 113317146X.

Women, Men, Children

“Robin was an outgrowth of a conversation I had with Bob. As I said, Batman was a combination of Fairbanks and Sherlock Holmes. Holmes had his Watson. The thing that bothered me was that Batman didn't have anyone to talk to, and it got a little tiresome always having him thinking. I found that as I went along Batman needed a Watson to talk to. That's how Robin came to be. Bob called me over and said he was going to put a boy in the strip to identify with Batman. I thought it was a great idea”

Bill Finger (1914–1974) American comic strip and comic book writer

[Jim Steranko, The Steranko History of Comics, Supergraphics, Reading, Pa., 1970, ISBN 0-517-50188-0, p.44]
Variant: Robin was an outgrowth of a conversation I had with Bob. As I said, Batman was a combination of Fairbanks and Sherlock Holmes. Holmes had his Watson. The thing that bothered me was that Batman didn't have anyone to talk to, and it got a little tiresome always having him thinking. I found that as I went along Batman needed a Watson to talk to. That's how Robin came to be. Bob called me over and said he was going to put a boy in the strip to identify with Batman. I thought it was a great idea

Boy, Idea

“You must get away from the real thing because the real thing will limit your acting and cripple you. To think of your own mother's death each time you want to cry onstage is schizophrenic and sick.”

Stella Adler (1901–1992) American actress and teaching coach

Obituary in New York Times

Death, Time, Cry

“I asked a teacher what the opposite of a miracle was and she, without thinking, I assume, said it was an act of God.
You shouldn't say something like that to the kind of kid who will grow up to be a writer; we have long memories.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

"I create gods all the time - now I think one might exist" (2008)

God, Teachers, Memory

“Since everything that lives is obliged to expend and receive life, there is an exchange of modifications between the living creature and its environment.
And yet, once that vital necessity is satisfied, our species—a positively strange species—thinks it must create for itself other needs and tasks besides that of preserving life. … Whatever may be the origin or cause of this curious deviation, the human species is engaged in an immense adventure, an adventure whose objective and end it does not know. …
The same senses, the same muscles, the same limbs—more, the same types of signs, the same instruments of exchange, the same languages, the same modes of logic—enter into the most indispensable acts of our lives, as they figure into the most gratuitous. …
In short, man has not two sets of tools, he has only one, and this one set must serve him for the preservation of his life and his physiological rhythm, and expend itself at other times on illusions and on the labours of our great adventure. …
The same muscles and nerves produce walking as well as dancing, exactly as our linguistic faculty enables us to express our needs and ideas, while the same words and forms can be combined to produce works of poetry. A single mechanism is employed in both cases for two entirely different purposes.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Source: Regards sur le monde actuel [Reflections on the World Today] (1931), pp. 158-159

Life, Idea, Sense, Time

“Reason, if consulted with, would advise, that their children's time should be spent in acquiring what might be useful to them when they come to be men, rather than to have their heads stuff'd with a deal of trash, a great part whereof they usually never do ('tis certain they never need to) think on again as long as they live: and so much of it as does stick by them they are only the worse for.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 94
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

Men, Children, Time, Parting

“So what mediates between the domains of order and chaos? Consciousness, as far as I can tell. It's the hero, that's one way of thinking about it. It's the Logos, that's another way of thinking about it. It's the word that generates order out of chaos at the beginning of time. It's the consciousness that's interacting with the matter of the world produces Being. That's basically it. That's basically you, for all intents and purposes. So how do we do that? Well, the unconscious does it to some degree, because it's with our fantasy that we first meet the unknown.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

World, Way, Time

“But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized — at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do — it's important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2011, Tucson Memorial Address (January 2011)

World, Way, Time

“p>Finally my Hiawatha
Tumbled all the tribe together,
('Grouped' is not the right expression),
And, as happy chance would have it
Did at last obtain a picture
Where the faces all succeeded:
Each came out a perfect likeness.Then they joined and all abused it,
Unrestrainedly abused it,
As the worst and ugliest picture
They could possibly have dreamed of.
'Giving one such strange expressions -
Sullen, stupid, pert expressions.
Really any one would take us
(Any one that did not know us)
For the most unpleasant people!”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

(Hiawatha seemed to think so,
Seemed to think it not unlikely.)
Hiawatha's Photographing
Rhyme? and Reason? (1883)

Happiness, People, Stupidity, Dreams

“Eating, bathing, going to the toilet, talking, thinking, and many other activities related to the body are all work. How is it that the performance of one particular act is alone (considered) work? To be still is to be always engaged in work. To be silent is to be always talking.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Abide as the Self

“When I hooked up with them I was still going to Narcotics Anonymous. But they were never into drugs. If it weren't for the band, I think I'd still be getting high.”

Bert McCracken (1982) American musician

Jim Farber (March 11, 2003) "Our Kelly's Mormon boyfriend", New Zealand Herald, Wilson & Horton Ltd., p. 6.

“I think that if there were a God, there would be less evil on this earth. I believe that if evil exists here below, then either it was willed by God or it was beyond His powers to prevent it. Now I cannot bring myself to fear a God who is either spiteful or weak. I defy Him without fear and care not a fig for his thunderbolts.”

Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) French novelist and philosopher

Justine or The Misfortunes of Virtue (1787)

God, Fear, Evil

“John is very sweet. He always mentions me in all his interviews; saying that he’s really fond of me. He says that he thinks of me as one of his favourite actors- its very nice. I’ve seen John’s growth from his first film to Baabul and beyond. I think he’s grown as an actor and of course he has become one of the most sought after stars today. I see girl fans who’re crazy about him. I feel good about that and I always believe that good people get good things in life - John is one of them Rani quotes.”

Rani Mukerji (1978) Indian film actress

http://ranimukherji.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=interviews&action=display&thread=407.
Rani On Celebrities

Life, People, Feeling, Quotes

“I wonder at those who think about their body's food, but do not think about their soul's food. They keep away disturbing food from their belly, but fill up their hearts with destructive subjects.”

Hasan ibn Ali (624–669) Shia Imam

Shaykh ‘Abbās Qummi, Safīnatul Bihār, Article of Taste
Religious-based Quotes

Food, Soul, Heart

“I think we have much more to say about what happens to us than most people believe.”

Yanni (1954) Greek pianist, keyboardist, composer, and music producer

Yanni in Words. Miramax Books. Co-author David Rensin

People

“If you can spend a little time with these creatures, you can connect them again to animals that you love, which I think helps everybody remember the importance of treating them humanely and with dignity. These are, you know, the lucky animals that have fallen off the backs of trucks and stuff. If you want to help the environment, go vegetarian.”

Jorja Fox (1968) American actress

From a 2008 interview on her involvement with Farm Sanctuary, a charity that rescues abused or neglected animals; as quoted in “'CSI' star fronts new PETA veggie campaign,” in MNN.com (9 November 2011) https://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/blogs/csi-star-fronts-new-peta-veggie-campaign.

Love, Time, Help, Animals

“What I give is the morphology of the use of an expression. I show that it has kinds of uses of which you had not dreamed. In philosophy one feels forced to look at a concept in a certain way. What I do is suggest, or even invent, other ways of looking at it. I suggest possibilities of which you had not previously thought. You thought that there was one possibility, or only two at most. But I made you think of others. Furthermore, I made you see that it was absurd to expect the concept to conform to those narrow possibilities. Thus your mental cramp is relieved, and you are free to look around the field of use of the expression and to describe the different kinds of uses of it.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Lectures of 1946 - 1947, as quoted in Ludwig Wittgenstein : A Memoir (1966) by Norman Malcolm, p. 43
1930s-1951

Dreams, Way, Feeling

“When a man acts in ways that annoy us we wish to think him wicked, and we refuse to face the fact that his annoying behaviour is a result of antecedent causes which, if you follow them long enough, will take you beyond the moment of his birth and therefore to events for which he cannot be held responsible by any stretch of imagination.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"The Doctrine of Free Will"
1930s, Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? (1930)

Way, Imagination, Birth

“For nearly five years the present Ministers have harassed every trade, worried every profession, and assailed or menaced every class, institution, and species of property in the country. Occasionally they have varied this state of civil warfare by perpetrating some job which outraged public opinion, or by stumbling into mistakes which have been always discreditable, and sometimes ruinous. All this they call a policy, and seem quite proud of it; but the country has, I think, made up its mind to close this career of plundering and blundering.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Letter to Lord Grey de Wilton (3 October 1873), cited in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, Vol. 5 (1920), p. 262.

Country

“There is no virtue they should be excited to, nor fault they should be kept from, which I do not think they may be convinced of; but it must be by such reasons as their age and understandings are capable of, and those propos'd always in very few and plain words.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 81
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

Age, Understanding

“On the other hand, the free states carry on their government on the principle of the equality of men. We think slavery is morally wrong, and a direct violation of that principle. We all think it wrong. It is clearly proved, I think, by natural theology, apart from revelation. Every man, black, white or yellow, has a mouth to be fed and two hands with which to feed it, and that bread should be allowed to go to that mouth without controversy.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)

Men, Nature

“Clear in thinking, and clear in feeling,
and clear in wanting”

Fernando Pessoa book Mensagem

Poem "D. Pedro", verses 1-2
Message
Original: Claro em pensar, e claro no sentir,
e claro no querer