Quotes about thinking
page 64

Linus Torvalds photo

“Security people are often the black-and-white kind of people that I can't stand. I think the OpenBSD crowd is a bunch of masturbating monkeys, in that they make such a big deal about concentrating on security to the point where they pretty much admit that nothing else matters to them.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Linux 2.6.25.10, 2008-07-15, Torvalds, Linus, 2008-07-16 http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/706950,
2000s, 2008

Kin Hubbard photo

“Bees are not as busy as we think they are. They jest can't buzz any slower.”

Kin Hubbard (1868–1930) cartoonist

As quoted in Reading I've Liked : A Personal Selection Drawn from Two Decades of Reading (1941) by Clifton Fadiman, p. 827.
Variants:
A bee is never as busy as it seems; it's just that it can't buzz any slower.
As quoted in The Modern Handbook of Humor (1967) by Ralph Louis Woods, p. 17
The bee isn't really that busy — it just can't buzz any slower.
As quoted in Peter's People (1979) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 29.

Don Marquis photo
Robert Olmstead photo
Larry the Cable Guy photo

“My mom went to that same doctor and got a butt lift. It's a little too lifted, I think, alright. Now every time she farts only dogs can hear it.”

Larry the Cable Guy (1963) American stand-up comedian, actor, country music artist, voice artist

Morning Constitutions (2007)

Lawrence Kudlow photo

“I think the housing boom is a tremendous plus.”

Lawrence Kudlow (1947) American economist

Speaking as a guest http://www.pkarchive.org/economy/MSNBCHardball080905.html on MSNBC's Hardball, August 9, 2005.

Glenn Beck photo
Nastassja Kinski photo
Andy Warhol photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Eric Hoffer photo
Oded Fehr photo

“The things I learned from the army - and I think it was a lesson for life - was how to work in unison with other people. How to take responsibility. Things like that I learned in the army.”

Oded Fehr (1970) Israeli-American actor

Interview with Oded Fehr http://www.somethingjewish.co.uk/articles/69_interview_with_oded_.htm (2001)

Rand Paul photo
Max Tegmark photo
Salma Hayek photo

“I'd hear, "Because they paid the man, there's no money for the woman." How many times do you think I heard this? Over and over. Then I became a sex symbol. Now, how the hell did that happen? I don't exactly know the moment when it happened, but all of a sudden I'm a bombshell. The way I discovered this was I did Desperado. I had a very hard time with the love scene. I cried throughout the love scene. That's why you never see long pieces of the love scene — it's little pieces cut together. I'm crying most of the time so they have to take little pieces. It took eight hours instead of an hour. I nearly got fired. … Because I didn't want to be naked in front of a camera. The whole time, I'm thinking of my father and my brother… And then when the movie comes out, I read the first review. What do they say about me. "Salma Hayek is a bombshell." I had heard that when a movie does badly here, they say it bombs. So I'm crying. Thinking they're saying, "That terrible actress! It's a bomb! Salma Hayek is the worst part of the movie!" I called my friend and said, "The critics are destroying me!" She says, "No, they're saying you're very sexy." And then I look at all the reviews, and everybody said I was very sexy. So I'm very confused. I said, "I wonder if that's good or bad." I hear, "Yes, that's good." Then I do Fools Rush In, and I'm a pregnant woman. And they say I'm sexy again! I go, "But I'm pregnant!"”

Salma Hayek (1966) Mexican-American actress and producer

I'm not even naked in this movie, and they still say I'm sexy. And then it became very depressing — I thought, I guess I'm reduced to that now. That's all I am in the perception of these people.
O interview (2003)

Salvador Dalí photo

“I think that the sweetest freedom for a man on earth consists in being able to live, if he likes, without having the need to work.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Source: Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1961 - 1970, Diary of a Genius (1964), p. 79

T.S. Eliot photo
Björk photo
Henry David Thoreau photo
Charlotte Perkins Gilman photo

“Only as we live, think, feel, and work outside the home, do we become humanly developed, civilized, socialized.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer

Source: Women and Economics (1898), Ch. 10.

Indra Nooyi photo
Frances Power Cobbe photo
Ernst Kaltenbrunner photo
Olivier Giroud photo

“I had a look at the keeper and I was thinking that he was a bit too much forward from his line. I tried instinctively to shoot and to hit the target. I was a bit lucky but that's what I wanted to do.”

Olivier Giroud (1986) French footballer

About his spectacular goal in the 2014 Community Shield http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archive/20140810/giroud-on-his-community-shield-goal

Owen Wilson photo
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle photo

“The calculus is to mathematics no more than what experiment is to physics, and all the truths produced solely by the calculus can be treated as truths of experiment. The sciences must proceed to first causes, above all mathematics where one cannot assume, as in physics, principles that are unknown to us. For there is in mathematics, so to speak, only what we have placed there… If, however, mathematics always has some essential obscurity that one cannot dissipate, it will lie, uniquely, I think, in the direction of the infinite; it is in that direction that mathematics touches on physics, on the innermost nature of bodies about which we know little.”

Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757) French writer, satirist and philosopher of enlightenment

Elements de la géométrie de l'infini (1727) as quoted by Amir R. Alexander, Geometrical Landscapes: The Voyages of Discovery and the Transformation of Mathematical Practice (2002) citing Michael S. Mahoney, "Infinitesimals and Transcendent Relations: The Mathematics of Motion in the Late Seventeenth Century" in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, ed. David C. Lindberg, Robert S. Westman (1990)

Mark Heard photo
Peter Greenaway photo
Maurice Ravel photo

“I have the intention to dedicate Le Gibet to you. It is not because I think you merit a rope to hang yourself, but because it is the least difficult of the three pieces.”

Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) French composer

Ravel to pianist Jean Marnold about Le Gibet from Gaspard de la Nuit

James Russell Lowell photo

“He who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to think security, and not progress, the highest lesson of statecraft.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

Literary Essays, vol. II (1870–1890)

Olaudah Equiano photo

“Such a tendency has the slave-trade to debauch men's minds, and harden them to every feeling of humanity! For I will not suppose that the dealers in slaves are born worse than other men—No; it is the fatality of this mistaken avarice, that it corrupts the milk of human kindness and turns it into gall. And, had the pursuits of those men been different, they might have been as generous, as tender-hearted and just, as they are unfeeling, rapacious and cruel. Surely this traffic cannot be good, which spreads like a pestilence, and taints what it touches! which violates that first natural right of mankind, equality and independency, and gives one man a dominion over his fellows which God could never intend! For it raises the owner to a state as far above man as it depresses the slave below it; and, with all the presumption of human pride, sets a distinction between them, immeasurable in extent, and endless in duration! Yet how mistaken is the avarice even of the planters? Are slaves more useful by being thus humbled to the condition of brutes, than they would be if suffered to enjoy the privileges of men? The freedom which diffuses health and prosperity throughout Britain answers you—No. When you make men slaves you deprive them of half their virtue, you set them in your own conduct an example of fraud, rapine, and cruelty, and compel them to live with you in a state of war; and yet you complain that they are not honest or faithful! You stupify them with stripes, and think it necessary to keep them in a state of ignorance; and yet you assert that they are incapable of learning; that their minds are such a barren soil or moor, that culture would be lost on them; and that they come from a climate, where nature, though prodigal of her bounties in a degree unknown to yourselves, has left man alone scant and unfinished, and incapable of enjoying the treasures she has poured out for him!—An assertion at once impious and absurd. Why do you use those instruments of torture? Are they fit to be applied by one rational being to another? And are ye not struck with shame and mortification, to see the partakers of your nature reduced so low? But, above all, are there no dangers attending this mode of treatment? Are you not hourly in dread of an insurrection? […] But by changing your conduct, and treating your slaves as men, every cause of fear would be banished. They would be faithful, honest, intelligent and vigorous; and peace, prosperity, and happiness, would attend you.”

Olaudah Equiano (1745–1797) African abolitionist

Chap. V
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789)

“We usually think that a strong economy leads to an increase in life satisfaction among the population. We found that's not the case in Scotland.”

David Blanchflower (1952) British economist

Dartmouth College news release 30 July 2004 http://www.dartmouth.edu/~news/releases/2004/07/30.html

Chris Cornell photo
Phillip Guston photo
Barbara Ehrenreich photo
William Jennings Bryan photo
Richard Nixon photo

“Well, then, some of you will say, and rightly, "Well, what did you use the fund for, Senator? Why did you have to have it?" Let me tell you in just a word how a Senate office operates. First of all, a Senator gets $15,000 a year in salary. He gets enough money to pay for one trip a year, a round trip, that is, for himself, and his family between his home and Washington, DC. And then he gets an allowance to handle the people that work in his office to handle his mail. And the allowance for my State of California, is enough to hire 13 people. And let me say, incidentally, that that allowance is not paid to the Senator. It is paid directly to the individuals that the Senator puts on his payroll. But all of these people and all of these allowances are for strictly official business; business, for example, when a constituent writes in and wants you to go down to the Veteran's Administration and get some information about his GI policy — items of that type, for example. But there are other expenses that are not covered by the Government. And I think I can best discuss those expenses by asking you some questions.Do you think that when I or any other senator makes a political speech, has it printed, should charge the printing of that speech and the mailing of that speech to the taxpayers? Do you think, for example, when I or any other Senator makes a trip to his home State to make a purely political speech that the cost of that trip should be charged to the taxpayers? Do you think when a Senator makes political broadcasts or political television broadcasts, radio or television, that the expense of those broadcasts should be charged to the taxpayers? Well I know what your answer is. It's the same answer that audiences give me whenever I discuss this particular problem: The answer is no. The taxpayers shouldn't be required to finance items which are not official business but which are primarily political business.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

1950s, Checkers speech (1952)

“For me, I have seen worlds and people begin and end, actually and metaphorically, and it will always be the same. It’s always fire and water.
No matter what your scientific background, emotionally you’re an alchemist. You live in a world of liquids, solids, gases and heat-transfer effects that accompany their changes of state. These are the things you perceive, the things you feel. Whatever you know about their true natures is rafted on top of that. So, when it comes to the day-to-day sensations of living, from mixing a cup of coffee to flying a kite, you treat with the four ideal elements of the old philosophers: earth, air, fire, water.
Let’s face it, air isn’t very glamorous, no matter how you look at it. I mean, I’d hate to be without it, but it’s invisible and so long as it behaves itself it can be taken for granted and pretty much ignored. Earth? The trouble with earth is that it endures. Solid objects tend to persist with a monotonous regularity.
Not so fire and water, however. They’re formless, colorful, and they’re always doing something. While suggesting you repent, prophets very seldom predict the wrath of the gods in terms of landslides and hurricanes. No. Floods and fires are what you get for the rottenness of your ways. Primitive man was really on his way when he learned to kindle the one and had enough of the other nearby to put it out. It is coincidence that we’ve filled hells with fires and oceans with monsters? I don’t think so. Both principles are mobile, which is generally a sign of life. Both are mysterious and possess the power to hurt or kill. It is no wonder that intelligent creatures the universe over have reacted to them in a similar fashion. It is the alchemical response.”

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 6 (pp. 137-138)

Phillips Brooks photo

“I think if you've got something to say and you can say it with less, that's the way to go.”

Philip Ó Ceallaigh (1968) Irish writer

Notes from a library bar (2006)

Fran Lebowitz photo
Princess Madeleine, Duchess of Hälsingland and Gästrikland photo
Jefferson Davis photo
Satoru Iwata photo
Skye Sweetnam photo

“What obstacle are you facing? Ask God for breakthrough thinking. Don't think about small changes. Think radically.”

Craig Groeschel (1967) American priest

It – How Churches and Leaders Can Get It and Keep It (2008, Zondervan)

Stanley Baldwin photo

“I think that to those of us who have watched the development of the Middle West and the Far West nothing is more remarkable, nothing pays a higher tribute to the finest qualities of our race, than the way in which law and order are maintained from coast to coast.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Regina, Canada (13 August 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), p. 105.
1927

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan photo
Andy Warhol photo

“Andy Warhol: I think everybody should like everybody.
Gene Swenson: Is that what Pop Art is all about?
Andy Warhol: Yes, it's liking things.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Quote in 'What is Pop Art? Answers from 8 Painters', in 'Art News' 62, November 1963
1963 - 1967

“I was brought up in a very logical place," said Linz, who had his bar mitzvah at Wilshire Boulevard Temple. "But I think they would”

Alex D. Linz (1989) American actor, filmmaker

happen
His attitude to miracles.
Article in Jewishjournal.com November 20, 2003

Brian Cox (physicist) photo
Stanley Baldwin photo
Max Horkheimer photo
Gustave Courbet photo
Mike Huckabee photo

“And they would ask, well, now, are you one of those narrow-minded Baptists who think only Baptists are going to heaven? To which I enjoy replying, now actually I'm more narrow than that, I don't think all the Baptists are going to make it.”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

CSIS "Decision 2008" Press Conference
2007-09-28
http://www.scribd.com/doc/20889610/PRESS-CONFERENCE-WITH-MIKE-HUCKABEE
2011-03-01

L. Ron Hubbard photo
Harlan Ellison photo
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali photo

“I think that Tunisia's achievements over the past two decades are now well known, and are testified to by numerous regional and international organizations and all honest observers. But what interests me in the first place is the feeling of all Tunisians that these achievements have positively changed their life.”

Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (1936–2019) Tunisian politician

Answering to the question of top Labenese Journalists, about his 2 decades of career, in the interview, (June 2008). http://www.thefreelibrary.com/President+Zine+El+Abidine+Ben+Ali's+interview+with+Mr.+Melhem+Karam,...-a0179997212

Mary Parker Follett photo
David Chalmers photo
Simone de Beauvoir photo

“One day I'll be old, dead, forgotten. And at this very moment, while I'm sitting here thinking these things, a man in a dingy hotel room is thinking, "I will always be here."”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

Regina to herself, p. 28
All Men are Mortal (1946)

William James photo
Hannah Arendt photo
Ginger Rogers photo
Angela Merkel photo

“I am thinking of airtight windows! No other country can build such airtight and beautiful windows.”

Angela Merkel (1954) Chancellor of Germany

Ich denke an dichte Fenster! Kein anderes Land kann so dichte und so schöne Fenster bauen.
Answering the question what emotions Germany arouses in her, Interview in the BILD-Zeitung on November 29, 2004
2004

Ron Paul photo

“Neil Cavuto: Yeah but, you can't, Congressman, we've got a pretty good economy going here, right? We've got productivity soaring. We've got retail sales that are strong. We've got corporate earnings that for, what, the 19th quarter, are up double digit? We've got a market chasing highs, I mean, this isn't happening in a vacuum, right?
Ron Paul: Yeah, that's nice, but when you have to borrow, you know… My personal finances would be very good if I borrowed a million dollars every month. But, someday, the bills will become due. And the bills will come due in this country, and then we'll have to pay for it. We can't afford this war, and we can't afford the entitlement system.
Neil Cavuto: Look, Congressman, did you say this 10 years ago, when the numbers were similarly strong…
Ron Paul: Go back and check.
Neil Cavuto: …and we were still borrowing a good deal then.
Ron Paul: That's right, that means the dollar bubble is much bigger than ever.
Neil Cavuto: So what's gonna happen?
Ron Paul: We've had the NASDAQ bubble collapse already. We have the housing bubble in the middle of a collapse, so the dollar bubble will collapse as well. We have to live within our means. You can't print money out of the blue, and think you can print your money into prosperity.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Your World with Neil Cavuto, FOX News, May 15, 2007 http://www.newshounds.us/2007/05/16/rep_ron_paul_tells_fox_newsrepublicans_the_truth_they_dont_like_hearing_it.php http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU2RK0TNbXk
2000s, 2006-2009

Marshall Faulk photo

“I think as a kid I never really understood the magnitude of a hurricane and what it could do.”

Marshall Faulk (1973) All-American college football player, professional football player, running back, Pro Football Hall of Fame memb…

St. Louis Post Dispatch 2005-08-31.

Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Victor Villaseñor photo
Esther Williams photo
Thomas Hardiman photo
Ingrid Newkirk photo
Bill Gates photo

“If you just want to say, "Steve Jobs invented the world, and then the rest of us came along," that's fine. If you’re interested, [Vista development chief] Jim Allchin will be glad to educate you feature by feature what the truth is. … Let’s be realistic, who came up with "File/Edit/View/Help"? Do you want to go back to the original Mac and think about where those interface concepts came from?”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

Interview with Steven Levy in Newsweek (31 January 2007) "Finally, Vista Makes Its Debut. Now What?" http://archive.is/20130105003445/www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2007/01/31/finally-vista-makes-its-debut-now-what.html
2000s

John Derbyshire photo
Ted Bundy photo

“I don't want to die. I'm not going to kid you. I'll kid you not. I deserve certainly the most extreme punishment society has…I think society deserves to be protected from me and others like me.”

Ted Bundy (1946–1989) American serial killer

1989 interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LYL1PTrtXo with James Dobson

John S. Bell photo
John McCain photo

“Diane Sawyer: Do you agree the situation in Afghanistan is precarious and urgent?
McCain: Well, I think it‘s very serious. I think it‘s a serious situation.
Sawyer: Not precarious and urgent?
McCain: Oh, I don‘t know exactly—run through the vocabulary. But it‘s a very serious situation. But there‘s a lot of things we need to do. We have a lot of work to do and I‘m afraid that it‘s a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq/Pakistan border.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

Good Morning America interview, after recent news that escalating insurgency and violent incidents had left around 2,500 people dead (over 700 of them civilians) since January of the same year in Afghanistan; 21 July 2008; http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25799429/
2000s, 2008

Paul Wolfowitz photo
Julian (emperor) photo
Alice Walker photo
Eugene Field photo

“I feel a sort of yearnin' 'nd a chokin' in my throat
When I think of Red Hoss Mountain 'nd of Casey's tabble dote!”

Casey's Table d'Hôte http://www.amherst.edu/~rjyanco94/literature/eugenefield/poems/westernandotherverse/caseystabledhote.html, st. 1
A Little Book of Western Verse (1889)

Hans von Seeckt photo

“The Weimar Constitution is for me not a noli me tangere; I did not participate in its creation, and it is in its basic principles contrary to my political thinking…I believed that a change of the constitution was approaching, and that I could help towards this by methods which were not unnecessarily to lead through civil war. So far as concerns my attitude towards the international Social Democracy, I have to confess that at the outset I believed in the possibility to winning over part of it to national co-operation; but I have revised this opinion long ago, a long time before our conversation, in so far as the Social Democratic Party is concerned, not the German working class as such…I see clearly that a collaboration with the Social Democratic Party is impossible because it repudiates the idea of military preparedness…I do not consider a Stresemann cabinet viable, not even after its transformation. This lack of confidence I have expressed to the chancellor himself as well as to the president, and I have told them that in the long run I could not guarantee the attitude of the Reichswehr to a government in which it had no confidence…A Stresemann government cannot last without the support of the Reichswehr and of the forces standing behind it.”

Hans von Seeckt (1866–1936) German general

Letter to von Kahr (2 November 1923), quoted in F. L. Carsten, The Reichswehr and Politics 1918 to 1933 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 117.

Noam Chomsky photo
Alan Sugar photo
Piet Mondrian photo

“Well, I think my paintings are fast enough already…”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote of Mondrian, 1930 reacting on Alexander Calder, as cited by by Mondrian's recent biographer Hans Janssen, of the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague; as cited by Alastair Sooke, in 'Mondrian - the Joy of Being Square'; BBC culture, 10 July 2017 http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170710-mondrian-the-joy-of-being-square
In 1930, the American sculptor Alexander Calder, (inventor of the mobile / moving sculpture) visited Mondrian in his studio in Paris. Calder said 'Maybe you should take all these red, yellow and blue elements off the canvas and let them hang in the air, so they can move'.
1930's

“It bodes well for the future that young people are thinking so intently about political issues.”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

On a return visit to their former school, Heckmondwike Grammar School — Emmerdale actress Tracy Brabin and Labour politician Jo Cox return to Heckmondwike Grammar School http://www.examiner.co.uk/news/local-news/emmerdale-actress-tracy-brabin-labour-7818688 (23 September 2014)

Jacques Lipchitz photo
Adlai Stevenson photo

“I am a lawyer. I think that one of the most fundamental responsibilities, not only of every citizen, but particularly of lawyers, is to give testimony in a court of law, to give it honestly and willingly, and it will be a very unhappy day for Anglo-Saxon justice when a man, even a man in public life, is too timid to state what he knows and what he has heard about a defendant in a criminal trial for fear that defendant might be convicted. That would to me be the ultimate timidity.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

On why he gave testimony on behalf of Alger Hiss, as quoted in Adlai Stevenson of Illinois : The Life of Adlai E. Stevenson (1976) by John Bartlow Martin, p. 552; also in "History Remembers…Adlai Stevenson" by Maureen Zebian in The Epoch Times (4 November 2004) http://en.epochtimes.com/news/4-11-4/24153.html