Quotes about thinking
page 5

“From the idea that the self is not given to us, I think there is only one practical consequence: we have to create ourselves as a work of art.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Art, Idea

“I think it's time you met Percy. - Annabeth”

Rick Riordan book The Hammer of Thor

Source: The Hammer of Thor

Time

“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what's left and live it properly. What doesn't transmit light creates its own darkness.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Life, Light, Dead

“In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought.”

Michael Crichton book Jurassic Park

Source: Jurassic Park

“George looked at her for a long moment. Finally he replied, "And why do you find it so hard to think someone might like you and want to do things for you?”

Tamora Pierce book Alanna: The First Adventure

Source: Alanna: The First Adventure

“I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.”

Alan Turing Computing Machinery and Intelligence

Source: Computing Machinery and Intelligence (1950), p. 442.
Source: Computing machinery and intelligence

Education

“Anyone who can only think of one way to spell a word obviously lacks imagination.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Way, Imagination

“Let's not go and ruin it by thinking too much.”

Clint Eastwood (1930) actor and director from the United States

“A heart ain't a brain
But I think
That I still love
you”

Chris Brown (1989) American singer, songwriter, dancer, actor , and painter

Love, Heart

“i think thats one of the problems with the world today, nobody knows who they are. everyone is running around looking for an identity, or trying to borrow one, only they dont know it. they actually think they know who they are and hat they are? theyre just a bunch of schleppers… who have no idea what a search for personal truth and identity really is, which would be alright if they didn't get in your way, but they insist that they know everything and that if you dont live their way then youre not living properly and they want to take your space away… they actually want to somehow get into your space and live in it and change it or destroy it… they just cant believe that you know what you are doing and that you are happy and content with it. you see thats the problem right there. if they could see that then they wouldnt have to feel threatened and feel that they have to destroy you before you destroy them. they just cant get it through their philistine heads that you are happy where you are and dont want to have anything to do with them. my space is mine and thats enough for me.”

Hubert Selby Jr. Requiem for a Dream

Source: Requiem for a Dream

Happiness, Truth, World, Way

“Let those find fault whose wit's so very small,
They've need to show that they can think at all;
Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;
He who would search for pearls, must dive below.”

John Dryden All for Love

Prologue
Source: All for Love (1678)
Context: Let those find fault whose wit's so very small,
They've need to show that they can think at all;
Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;
He who would search for pearls, must dive below.
Fops may have leave to level all they can;
As pigmies would be glad to lop a man.
Half-wits are fleas; so little and so light,
We scarce could know they live, but that they bite.

Error, Search

“Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

Anarchism: What It Really Stands For (1910) http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_archives/goldman/aando/anarchism.html <br class="br">Context: Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think. The widespread mental indolence, so prevalent in society, proves this to be only too true. Rather than to go to the bottom of any given idea, to examine into it's origing and meaning, most people will either condem it alltogether, or rely on some superficial or perjudicial definition of non-essentials

Effort

“A conservative is a man who sits and thinks, mostly sits.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

“What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who only has eyes, if he is a painter, or ears if he is a musician, or a lyre in every chamber of his heart if he is a poet, or even, if he is a boxer, just his muscles? Far from it: at the same time he is also a political being, constantly aware of the heartbreaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. How could it be possible to feel no interest in other people, and with a cool indifference to detach yourself from the very life which they bring to you so abundantly? No, painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Life, War, People, World

“She says it has nothing to do with what you look like, or what you have. It has only to do with what you think of and what you do.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett A Little Princess

Variant: She says it has nothing to do with what you look like, or what you have. It has only to do with what you think of, and what you do.
Source: A Little Princess

“Sanity was statistical. It was merely a question of learning to think as they thought.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Question, Learning

“Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.”

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

As quoted in The Mammoth Book of Zingers, Quips, and One-Liners (2004) edited by Geoff Tibballs, p. 299
General sources

People, Funny, Cute

“I suppose nowadays it's all a question of surgery, isn't it? Of course the notion is beautiful, the idea of staying a boy and a child forever, and I think you can. I have known plenty of people who, in their later years, had the energy of children and the kind of curiosity and fascination with things like little children. I think we can keep that, and I think it's important to keep that part of staying young. But I also think it's great fun growing old.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Children, People, Beauty, Boy

“… no one ever became excellent in any exercise whatsoever without beginning from his childhood to endure heat, cold, hunger, thirst, and other discomforts; wherefore those men are entirely deceived who think to be able, at their ease and with all the comforts of the world, to attain an honorable rank. It is not by sleeping but by waking and studying continually that progress is made. [on Luca Della Robbia]”

Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) Italian painter, architect, writer and historian

Men, Hunger, World, Exercises

“I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Painting

“When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it. That's what I think. It's just a form of sincerity.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Love, Nature, Sincerity

“The meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering but in the development of the soul.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn book Cancer Ward

Source: Cancer Ward

Soul

“So does that mean you're going to fall in love with me again?
What makes you think i ever stopped?”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Hidden Riches

Love

“The person who reads too much and uses his brain too little will fall into lazy habits of thinking..”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Reading, Personality

“If we could look into each other’s hearts and understand the unique challenges each of us faces, I think we would treat each other much more gently, with more love, patience, tolerance, and care.”

Marvin J. Ashton (1915–1994) Apostle of the LDS Church

Love, Understanding, Heart, Patience

“Clear thinking at the wrong moment can stifle creativity.”

Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019) German fashion designer

“You don't have to think about love; you either feel it or you don't.”

Laura Esquivel book Like Water for Chocolate

Source: Like Water for Chocolate

Love, Feeling

“In a way, it made him sad. He couldn't help but think that a hundred times zero was still nothing.”

Louis Sachar book Holes

Source: Holes

Sadness, Way, Time, Help

“Few men think; yet all have opinions.”

George Berkeley book Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous

Philonous to Hylas. The Second Dialogue. This appears in a passage first added in the third edition, (1734)
Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713)

Men

“… I will exile my thoughts if they think of you again, and I will rip my lips out if they say your name once more. Now if you do exist, I will tell you my final word in life or in death, I tell you goodbye.”

Knut Hamsun book Hunger

Source: Hunger

Life, Death

“I don't know whether I believe in God or not. I think, really, I'm some kind of a Buddhist. But the essential thing is to put oneself in a frame of mind which is close to that of prayer.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

God

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Disputed <br class="br">Variant: No one can make you feel inferior without your permission. <br class="br">Source: Sometimes claimed to appear in her book This is My Story, but in The Quote Verifier by Ralph Keyes (2006), Keyes writes on p. 97 that "Bartlett's and other sources say her famous quotation can be found in This is My Story, Roosevelt's 1937 autobiography. It can't. Quotographer Rosalie Maggio scoured that book and many others by and about Roosevelt in search of this line, without success. In their own extensive searching, archivists at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York, have not been able to find the quotation in This Is My Story or any other writing by the First Lady. A discussion of some of the earliest known attributions of this quote to Roosevelt, which may be a paraphrase from an interview, can be found in this entry from Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/03/30/not-inferior/.

Feeling, Motivational, Wise, For women

“Why does this mean so much to you, Jon?"
The Prince turned. "Because he's my friend. Because I always know where he stands, and where I stand with him. Because I think he'd die for me and--and I think I'd die for him. Is that enough?”

Tamora Pierce book Alanna: The First Adventure

Source: Alanna: The First Adventure

“It is when we are trapped in incessant streams of compulsive thinking that the universe really disintegrates for us, and we lose the ability to sense the interconnectedness of all that exists.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

Sense, Universe

“I don't think I've drunk enough beer to understand that.”

Terry Pratchett book The Last Continent

Source: The Last Continent

Beer, Understanding

“Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.”

Jean Racine (1639–1699) French dramatist

Life, Feeling

“People who think they're free in this world just haven't come to the end of their leash yet.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

People, World

“Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on. I hope you never think about anything as much as I think about you.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 224

Hope, Time, Training

“I used to think that eighty was a very old age. Now I am ninety. I do not think this any more. As long as you are able to admire and to love, you are young.”

Pablo Casals (1876–1973) Catalan cellist and conductor

Love, Age

“Do not think I do not know that Cecily wants you to return home with her. And do not think I do not know that you remain for Jem's sake."

"And yours," he said before he could stop himself.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Home

“I don't feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for a love relationship is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don't know what will be the end. My field is the history of thought. Man is a thinking being.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Truth, Power, Self : An Interview with Michel Foucault (25 October 1982)

Love, Life, Books, Feeling

“Eternity isn't some later time. Eternity isn't a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now which thinking and time cuts out. This is it. And if you don't get it here, you won't get it anywhere. And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Episode 2, Chapter 13-14
The Power of Myth (1988)
Context: Campbell: Eternity isn't some later time. Eternity isn't a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now which thinking and time cuts out. This is it. And if you don't get it here, you won't get it anywhere. And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life. There's a wonderful formula that the Buddhists have for the Bodhisattva, the one whose being (sattva) is illumination (bodhi), who realizes his identity with eternity and at the same time his participation in time. And the attitude is not to withdraw from the world when you realize how horrible it is, but to realize that this horror is simply the foreground of a wonder and to come back and participate in it. "All life is sorrowful" is the first Buddhist saying, and it is. It wouldn't be life if there were not temporality involved which is sorrow. Loss, loss, loss.
Moyers: That's a pessimistic note.
Campbell: Well, you have to say yes to it, you have to say it's great this way. It's the way God intended it.

Life, Time

“If you want to know what God thinks about money just look at the people He gives it to.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Money, God, People, Funny

“Don't think of them now. Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them. You're here. It's our time and our life, not theirs. Don't struggle not to be happy. You are."

- John Gault”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Life, Pain, Happiness, Time

“Besides, isn't it confoundedly easy to think you're a great man if you aren't burdened with the slightest idea that Rembrandt, Beethoven, Dante or Napoleon ever lived?”

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) Austrian writer

Source: Chess Story

Idea

“I can't think of anything to write about, I'm just walking around here between the lines, under the light of your eyes, in the breadth of your mouth as in a beautiful happy day, which remains beautiful and happy, even when the head is sick and tired.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

Happiness, Beauty, Light

“Example is not the main thing. It is the only thing. That is, if the one giving the example is not saying to himself, 'Behold I am giving an example.' That spoils it. Anyone thinking of the example he will give to others has lost his simplicity. Only as a man has simplicity can his example influence others.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Sometimes presented in paraphrased form, such as "Example is not the main thing in influencing others, it is the only thing" https://books.google.com/books?id=5Za7o6teOHoC&pg=PR18&dq=%22example+is+not+the+main+thing%22+schweitzer&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjFh4m9vqvMAhUG02MKHRqZDtsQ6AEIMzAE#v=onepage&q=%22example%20is%20not%20the%20main%20thing%22%20&f=false. <br class="br">God's Own Man (1952)

“I believe that love--not imitation--is the sincerest form of flattery. Your imitator thinks that you can be duplicated; your lover knows you can't.”

Marilyn vos Savant (1946) US American magazine columnist, author and lecturer

Love, Lovers

“it's your own fault for encouraging him…, you know. Now he thinks he's a human being.
Neal of Queens cove”

Tamora Pierce book Page

Source: Page

“Alan, you seem to think we won't like you unless you do things just like everyone else. Have you ever thought we might like you because you're different?”

Tamora Pierce book Alanna: The First Adventure

Source: Alanna: The First Adventure

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own (1929), Ch. 1, p. 18
Context: The human frame being what it is, heart, body and brain all mixed together, and not contained in separate compartments as they will be no doubt in another million years, a good dinner is of great importance to good talk. One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

Love, Sleep

“J. M. W. Turner's Poem dedicated to Ivan Aivazovsky (1842)

Like a curtain slowly drawn
It stops suddenly half open,
Or, like grief itself, filled with gentle hope,
It becomes lighter in the shore-less dark,
Thus the moon barely wanes
Winding her way above the storm-tossed sea.
Stand upon this hill and behold endlessly
This scene of a formidable sea,
And it will seem to thee a waking dream.
That secret mind flowing in thee
Which even the day cannot scatter,
The serenity of thinking and the beating of the heart
Will enchain thee in this vision;
This golden-silver moon
Standing lonely over the sea,
All curtain the grief of even the hopeless.
And it appears that through the tempest
Moves a light caressing wind,
While the sea swells up with a roar,
Sometimes, like a battlefield it looks to me
The tempestuous sea,
Where the moon itself is a brilliant golden crown
Of a great king.
But even that moon is always beneath thee
Oh Master most high,
Oh forgive thou me
If even this master was frightened for a moment
Oh, noble moment, by art betrayed…
And how may one not delight in thee,
Oh thou young boy, but forgive thou me,
If I shall bend my white head
Before thy art divine
Thy bliss-wrought genius…”

J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) British Romantic landscape painter, water-colourist, and printmaker

Source: J.M.W. Turner

Secret, Dreams, Hope, Art

“For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Source: Selected Poems and Four Plays

Love, Star

“If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Appearance

“But the picking out, the choosing. Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it. I saw you and made up my mind. My mind.”

Toni Morrison book Jazz

Source: Jazz

Love

“No, everybody's gotta learn, nobody's born knowin'. That Walter's as smart as he can be, he just gets held back sometimes because he has to stay out and help his daddy. Nothin's wrong with him. Naw, Jem, I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Learning, Help

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”

Alice Walker book The Color Purple

Source: The Color Purple (1982)

God, Color

“Um… is that thing?" Frank said.
The horse whinnied angrily.
"I don't think so," Percy guessed. "He just said”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

Horse, Funny

“Nosoi?” Percy planted his feet in a fighting stance. “You know, I keep thinking, I have now killed every single thing in Greek mythology. But the list never seems to end.”

“You haven’t killed me yet,” I noted.

“Don’t tempt me.”

Rick Riordan book The Hidden Oracle

Source: The Hidden Oracle

Fight

“When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Beauty, Past, Missing You

“Forget conventionalisms; forget what the world thinks of you stepping out of your place; think your best thoughts, speak your best words, work your best works, looking to your own conscience for approval.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

World, Forgetting

“I think about the meaning of pain. Pain is personal. It really belongs to the one feeling it. Probably the only thing that is your own. I like mine.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Pain, Feeling, Personality

“From now on you're going to have to think. There's a reason why we're born with brains in our heads, not rocks.”

Christopher Paolini book Eragon

Source: Eragon

“Patience, he thought. So much of this was patience - waiting, and thinking and doing things right. So much of all this, so much of all living was patience and thinking.”

Gary Paulsen book Hatchet

Source: Hatchet

Waiting, Patience

“I think I'm a natural-born leader. I know how to bow down to authority if it's authority that I respect.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Nature

“I'm not stupid. I know everybody thinks I am. I just don't like answering their questions.”

Louis Sachar book Holes

Source: Holes

Stupidity, Question

“People can tell you to keep your mouth shut, but it doesn't stop you having your own opinions. Even if people are still very young, they shouldn't be prevented from saying what they think.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

2 March 1944
(1942 - 1944)
Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

People

“Flattery is telling the other person precisely what he thinks about himself.”

Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American writer and lecturer

Personality

“I think I need a drink.'
'Almost everybody does only they don't know it.”

Charles Bukowski book Women

Source: Women

Drink

“Love me sweet
With all thou art
Feeling, thinking, seeing;
Love me in the Lightest part,
Love me in full Being.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

Love, Art, Feeling, Parting

“He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him), and took a sort of pleasure in thinking that human affairs would never improve.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 30
Source: Down and Out in Paris and London
Context: He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him), and took a sort of pleasure in thinking that human affairs would never improve. Sometimes, he said, when sleeping on the Embankment, it had consoled him to look up at Mars or Jupiter and think that there were probably Embankment sleepers there. He had a curious theory about this. Life on earth, he said, is harsh because the planet is poor in the necessities of existence. Mars, with its cold climate and scanty water, must be far poorer, and life correspondingly harsher. Whereas on earth you are merely imprisoned for stealing sixpence, on Mars you are probably boiled alive. This thought cheered Bozo, I do not know why. He was a very exceptional man.

God, Pleasure, Personality

“You think it's so great to die and make everyone cry and carry on. Well it ain't.”

Katherine Paterson book Bridge to Terabithia

Source: Bridge to Terabithia

Cry

“Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

The Crown of Wild Olive, lecture IV: The Future of England, section 151 (1866).

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”

Alice Walker book The Color Purple

Source: The Color Purple

God, People, World, Fools

“I think that hate is a feeling that can only exist where there is no understanding.”

Tennessee Williams Sweet Bird of Youth

Source: Sweet Bird of Youth

Hate, Feeling, Understanding

“Every thought we think is creating our future.”

Louise L. Hay (1926–2017) American writer

Future

“It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau book Confessions

Variant translation: It is too difficult to think nobly when one only thinks to get a living.
Source: Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1765-1770; published 1782), Books II-VI, II
Source: Confessions

“Arguments for preservation based on the beauty of wilderness are sometimes treated as if they were of little weight because they are "merely aesthetic". That is a mistake. We go to great lengths to preserve the artistic treasures of earlier human civilisations. It is difficult to imagine any economic gain that we would be prepared to accept as adequate compensation for, for instance, the destruction of the paintings in the Louvre. How should we compare the aesthetic value of wilderness with that of the paintings in the Louvre? Here, perhaps, judgment does become inescapably subjective; so I shall report my own experiences. I have looked at the paintings in the Louvre, and in many of the other great galleries of Europe and the United States. I think I have a reasonable sense of appreciation of the fine arts; yet I have not had, in any museum, experiences that have filled my aesthetic senses in the way that they are filled when I walk in a natural setting and pause to survey the view from a rocky peak overlooking a forested valley, or by a stream tumbling over moss-covered boulders set amongst tall tree-ferns, growing in the shade of the forest canopy, I do not think I am alone in this; for many people, wilderness is the source of the greatest feelings of aesthetic appreciation, rising to an almost mystical intensity.”

Peter Singer book Practical Ethics

Source: Practical Ethics

People, Beauty, Art, Way

“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Introduction to Treasury of the Free World (1946)
Source: Ernest Hemingway: A Literary Reference
Context: An aggressive war is the great crime against everything good in the world. A defensive war, which must necessarily turn to aggressive at the earliest moment, is the necessary great counter-crime. But never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead.

War

“Everyone thinks that courage is about facing death without flinching. But almost anyone can do that. Almost anyone can hold their breath and not scream for as long as it takes to die.

True courage is about facing life without flinching. I don't mean the times when the right path is hard, but glorious at the end. I'm talking about enduring the boredom, the messiness, and the inconvenience of doing what is right.”

Robin Hobb book The Mad Ship

Source: The Mad Ship

Life, Death, Courage, Time

“I decided to accept as true my own thinking.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

“This life we live nowadays! It's not life, it's stagnation, death-in-life. Look at all these bloody houses, and the meaningless people inside them! Sometimes I think we're all corpses. Just rotting upright.”

George Orwell book Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch. 5

Life, Death, People, Housing

“Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.”

Walter Lippmann (1889–1974) American journalist

The Stakes of Diplomacy http://books.google.com/books?id=cyFMAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Where+all+think+alike+no+one+thinks+very+much%22&pg=PA51#v=onepage (1915)

For Men

“Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

World, Lying, Time, Night

“nobody means to get carried away in mediocrity, but it happens, it happens unless you think about everything you do, unless you make every choice the best one you know how to make.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: One

“Yes, you live with your feet in the mud and there's no time to be thinking about how you got in or how you're going to get out.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Source: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Time

“I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me. But I do not think my life will be long. As my uncle went, as poor Johansen went, so I shall go. I know too much, and the cult still lives.”

H.P. Lovecraft book The Call of Cthulhu

Source: Fiction, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

Life, Spring, Flowers, Universe

“People don’t like to think, if one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years (1967)
Context: Some people do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions; and conclusions are not always pleasant. They are a thorn in the spirit. But I consider it a priceless gift and a deep responsibility to think.

People

“You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale