Quotes about thinking
page 57

“We are like water, aren’t we? We can be fluid, flexible when we have to be. But strong and destructive, too.” And something else, I think to myself. Like water, we mostly follow the path of least resistance.”

Wally Lamb (1950) american novelist

Source: We Are Water

Strong, Water

“Why should we think upon things that are lovely Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Love, Life, Soul

“Sometimes I think that maybe we are just stories.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Tiger Lily

“Try a rocket launcher. Think maybe you could manage to hit me with that?”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

“Everyone is always going through tough things, the irony in it is that everyone thinks what they're going through is just as hard as what you are. Life isn't about surviving this, it's about understanding this.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Life, Understanding

“It's scary when it's real. When it's not just thinking about a person, but, like, having a real live person in front of you, with, like, expectations. And wants.”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Personality

“It is so easy to think that the world revolves around you, but all you have to do is stare up at the sky to realize it isn't that way at all.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

World, Way

“To be honest, I think cell phones were invented by the devil.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Source: NOS4A2

“Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Source: A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

Women, Men

“I didn't know I had it in me. There's more to all of us than we realize. Life is so much bigger, grander, higher, and wider than we allow ourselves to think. We're capable of so much more than we allow ourselves to believe.”

Queen Latifah (1970) American musician and actress

Source: Put on Your Crown: Life-Changing Moments on the Path to Queendom

Life

“Healthy striving is about striving for internal goals, and wanting to be our best selves. Perfectionism is not motivated internally. Perfectionism is about what people will think. And you do not see effective leaders in corporations sitting on an email for three hours to make sure it’s worded just perfectly. You don’t. They have work to get done.. You don’t see elite athletes letting themselves be discouraged by a bad workout or a single bad performance. It happens all the time. They’re accustomed to winning, they’re accustomed to losing. Once perfectionism becomes the goal, they’re out of the sport.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Washington Post, October 2012 http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/exhaustion-is-not-a-status-symbol/2012/10/02/19d27aa8-0cba-11e2-bb5e-492c0d30bff6_story_2.html Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

People, Motivation, Sport, Time

“I dream. Sometimes I think that’s the only right thing to do. To dream, to live in the world of dreams. But it doesn’t last forever. Wakefulness always comes to take me back.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

World, Dreams

“The only way to not think about money is to have a great deal of it."

You might as well say that the only way not to think about air is to have enough to breathe.”

Edith Wharton book The House of Mirth

Source: The House of Mirth

Money, Way

“If you truly love film, I think the healthiest thing to do is not read books on the subject. I prefer the glossy film magazines with their big colour photos and gossip columns, or the National Enquirer.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Such vulgarity is healthy and safe.
Herzog on Herzog (2002)

Love, Books, Photo, Reading

“I'd been in hairier situations than this one. Actually, it's sort of depressing, thinking how many times I'd been in them. But if experience had taught me anything, it was this: No matter how screwed up things are, they can get a whole lot worse.”

Jim Butcher book Blood Rites

Source: Blood Rites

Time

“You can go on like this for a very long time, and no one will notice. You keep thinking you're going to hit some sort of bottom, but I'm here to tell you: There is no bottom.”

Dan Chaon (1964) American writer

Source: Among the Missing

Time

“The biggest mistake we could ever make in our lives is to think we work for anybody but ourselves.”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

“Odd to think that the piece of you I know best is already dead. The cells on the surface of your skin are thin and flat without the blood vessels or nerve endings. Dead cells, thickest on the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Written on the Body

Dead

“Once you've posed that question, it won't go away. I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

People, Question

“If I didn't think, I'd be much happier; if I didn't have any sex organs, I wouldn't waver on the brink of nervous emotion and tears all the time.”

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

1950 entry, quoted in Kate Moses, "The Real Sylvia Plath," Salon.com (2000-06-01) http://dir.salon.com/story/books/feature/2000/06/01/plath2/ The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000) Variant: If I didn't think, I'd be much happier; if I didn't have any sex organs, I wouldn't waver on the brink of nervous emotion and tears all the time. Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Sex, Tear, Time

“The truth is… you think what people want you to think.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Haunted

Source: Haunted

People, Truth

“All I can say is, she's the one I think about. All the time. She's the voice I want to hear. She's the face I hope to see. - Sam Roxton”

Sophie Kinsella book I've Got Your Number

Source: I've Got Your Number

Hope, Time

“I think, when men tell women to lose weight, it's a diversion from their own lack of size in certain areas.”

Candace Bushnell book Sex and the City

Source: Sex and the City

Women, Men

“The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.”

B.F. Skinner (1904–1990) American behaviorist

Contingencies of Reinforcement: A Theoretical Analysis (1969).
Source: Contingencies Of Reinforcement: A Theoretical Analysis

Men, Question

“And I just want to tell you, at some point it doesn’t matter who was right and who was wrong. At some point, being
angry is just another bad habit, like smoking, and you keep poisoning
yourself without thinking about it.”

Jonathan Tropper (1970) American writer

Source: This is Where I Leave You

“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Remarks During Signing of Defense Bill http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/aug/06/uselections2004.usa2 (5 August 2004). 2000s, 2004

People, Way, Country

“I do not think that I will ever reach a stage when I will say, "This is what I believe. Finished." What I believe is alive… and open to growth”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

“Maybe instead of stalking her, you should go out with someone else."

He sighed. "You don't think I've tried? How can anyone compare? You might not believe this, but there is no one like Ageline at this school.”

Richelle Mead book The Fiery Heart

Source: The Fiery Heart

School

“As my father always used to tell me, 'You see, son, there's always someone in the world worse off than you.' And I always used to think, 'So?”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Source: The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America

World

“Many of the best traps are simple. You just have to think about it, and hope your victim doesn't.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Hope

“Funny how we think of romance as always involving two, when the romance of solitude can be ever so much more delicious and intense.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

Solitude

“It makes one realize that the physicality if our world is a boundary to us only if our will is weak; a true champion can accomplish things that a normal person would think impossible.”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

World, Personality

“Adrian suddenly made an abrupt turn onto a side street we'd nearly driven past. I jerked upright as he clipped the curb.
"What are you doing? Think about your tires!”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

Jerk, Past

“And I suddenly think, as I look across the table at him, that these are the days as they will be. This is the future as we see it. The swerve and the static. The confidence and the doubt.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Confidence, Future

“I am completely half afraid to think.”

Flann O'Brien book The Third Policeman

Source: The Third Policeman (1967)

“I don’t want you to think I got through this undamaged, okay? But I’m learning to live with it. Because otherwise, the damage is all you are.”

David Levithan book Every You, Every Me

Source: Every You, Every Me

Learning

“Then you think that one can keep a hopeless love in one's heart for so long as that?… And that life can breathe upon it every day, without extinguishing it?”

André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist

Love, Life, Heart

“Jack," said Charles, "he's making up words again."

"Yes," Jack replied, "but he's getting better at it, don't you think?”

James A. Owen The Search for the Red Dragon

Source: The Search for the Red Dragon

“I
think that the
world should be full of cats and full of rain, that's all, just
cats and
rain, rain and cats, very nice, good
night.”

Charles Bukowski book Betting on the Muse: Poems and Stories

Source: Betting on the Muse: Poems and Stories

World, Cats, Night

“Can you imagine, finally showing your true self to your spouse, your soul mate, and having him not like you? So that's how the hating first began. I've thought about this a lot, and that's where it started, I think.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

Hate, Soul, Imagination

“It would be a terrible mistake to go through life thinking that people are the sum total of what you see.”

Jonathan Tropper (1970) American writer

This Is Where I Leave You (2009), 2014-January-15 http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/This_Is_Where_I_Leave_You.html?id=3jVps2Z9LQcC, Source: This is Where I Leave You

Life, People

“I thought you needed to be tougher. But I've been thinking that protecting somebody by hurting them before someone else gets the chance isn't the kind of protecting that anybody wants.”

Holly Black book Doll Bones

Source: Doll Bones

Chance, Hurt

“A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart who looks at her watch.”

James Beard (1903–1985) American chef

“A fight is like a fire. You think you have it under control, you think you can stop it whenever you want, but before you know it, it’s living, breathing thing and there’s no controlling it and you were a fool to think you could.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: We'll Always Have Summer

Fools, Fight

“It's not the side-effects of the cocaine - I'm thinking that it must be love.

It's too late to be grateful,
It's too late to be hateful,
It's too late to be late again,
The European cannon is here.”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

Love, Hate

“If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you.”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

As quoted in The Volta Review (1934), p. 574 http://books.google.de/books?id=qWE4AQAAIAAJ&q=hate, Clifton Fadiman: The American Treasury 1455-1955 (New York 1955) p. 997 http://books.google.de/books?id=PEQ4AAAAIAAJ&q=really+make+them and Hugh Rawson, Margaret Miner: The Oxford Dictionary of American Quotations (2006) p. 431 #5 http://books.google.de/books?id=whg05Z4Nwo0C&pg=PA431&dq=mehitabel from archy and mehitabel (1927) Variant: If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.

Love, Hate, People

“Because it strikes me there is something greater than judgement. I think it is called mercy.”

Sebastian Barry book The Secret Scripture

Source: The Secret Scripture

“I like France, where everybody thinks he's Napoleon--down here everybody thinks he's Christ.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book Tender Is the Night

Source: Tender Is the Night

Christ

“It’s all relative, I suppose. You think you know love, you think you know real pain, but you don’t. You don’t know anything.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: It's Not Summer Without You

Love, Pain

“Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits…”

A.A. Milne (1882–1956) British author

“Statistically the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you would think the mere fact of existence would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise.”

Lewis Thomas book The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

"On Probability and Possibility"
The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974)
Context: Statistically the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you would think the mere fact of existence would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise. We are alive against the stupendous odds of genetics, infinitely outnumbered by all the alternates who might, except for luck, be in our places.