Quotes about thinking
page 96

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1830s, The American Scholar http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm (1837)

Mary Parker Follett photo
Robert M. Pirsig photo
Harriet Harman photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Werner Erhard photo

“Belief in God is the single greatest barrier to God in the Universe. It is almost a total barrier to the experience of God. When you think you have experienced God, you haven't. Experiencing God is experiencing God, and that is true religion.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

[Ruth Tucker, 2004, Another Gospel: Cults, Alternative Religions, and the New Age Movement, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Zondervan, 369, 0310259371]
Attributed

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton photo
Robert Solow photo
Scott Moir photo
Adolfo Bioy Casares photo

“Sometimes I think Johnson´s Lives of the English Poets is all I need to be happy.”

Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914–1999) Argentine novelist

"A veces pienso que La vida de los poetas de Johnson es todo lo que necesito para ser feliz."
Descanso de caminantes, 2001.

Sarah Gadon photo
Suzanne Collins photo
Richard Feynman photo
David Haye photo

“I think that [as a vegan] I’m now fitter than I've ever been. I punch harder than ever. I’m more determined. I’m faster. … Diet’s the biggest thing, because your body is a machine.”

David Haye (1980) British boxer

“David Haye: Going vegan made me stronger than I've ever been,” in Telegraph.co.uk (6 May 2016) https://web.archive.org/web/20180110175026/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/david-haye-going-vegan-made-stronger-than-ive-ever-been/.

“I talk thinking that I shouldn't talk: that is how I talk.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Hablo pensando que no debiera hablar: así hablo.
Voces (1943)

Walter Raleigh photo
Daniel Handler photo
Bill Maher photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo

“Friendship is the greatest of worldly goods. Certainly to me it is the chief happiness of life. If I had to give a piece of advice to a young man about a place to live, I think I shd. say, 'sacrifice almost everything to live where you can be near your friends.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

Letter to Arthur Greeves (29 December 1935) — in They Stand Together: The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914–1963) (1979), p. 477

Heather Small photo

“People used to think my dedication to my diet was crazy, but now they realise that what you put in your body makes a difference. I would strongly recommend to anyone suffering with allergies to think about adjusting their diet, as I would never have had a singing career if I hadn’t.”

Heather Small (1965) British vocalist

"Singer Heather Small reveals how her terrible allergies almost ruined her pop career," in the Mirror (20 June 2016) http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/singer-heather-small-reveals-how-8238723.

Vincent Van Gogh photo
Grady Booch photo
Alfred P. Sloan photo
Anatoliy Tymoshchuk photo
Wesley Clark photo

“G. Gordon Liddy says that Democrats haven't given the president enough credit. I think the president deserves full credit. In fact I think he should be held fully accountable.”

Wesley Clark (1944) American general and former Democratic Party presidential candidate

Esquire magazine (August 2003)

Alex Jones photo
Edward Hopper photo
Rousas John Rushdoony photo
Thomas Wolfe photo
Henri Poincaré photo
John Buchan photo
Kenneth Arrow photo
Gwyneth Paltrow photo

“We [the U. S. ] think nothing…of attempting to inflict upon other peoples forms of government ill-tailored to their needs.”

Ralph Peters (1952) American military officer, writer, pundit

Source: 2000s, Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World (2002), p. 218

Dana Rohrabacher photo
Zach Galifianakis photo

“At what age do you think it's appropriate to tell a highway it's adopted?”

Zach Galifianakis (1969) American actor and comedian

Live at the Purple Onion (2007)

Bart D. Ehrman photo
Miguel de Unamuno photo
Jesper Kyd photo
Al Gore photo
David Dixon Porter photo

“Regulations of the Navy provide that medical officers shall exercise no military authority. If I give you a flag, the line officers will think I have gone crazy.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), pp. 202– 203

Kenneth Gärdestad photo

“Sun, wind and water are
The best as I know
But it's on you, I
Think secretly
Sun, wind and water
High mountains and deep sea
That is my dream woven off.”

Kenneth Gärdestad (1948–2018) Swedish song lyricist, architect and lecturer

Sol, vind och vatten är
Det bästa som jag vet
Men det är på dig jag
Tänker I hemlighet
Sol, vind och vatten
Höga berg och djupa hav
Det, är mina drömmar vävda av
"Sol, vind och vatten", lyrics written by Kenneth
Song lyrics, With Ted Gärdestad, Ted (1973)

Alexander McCall Smith photo
Amy Tan photo
Gustav Stresemann photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Stephenie Meyer photo

“…potted thinking is easily accepted, is concentrated in form, and has lost the vitamins essential to mental nourishment.”

Susan Stebbing (1885–1943) British philosopher

As quoted in Thinking to Some Purpose (1939), p. 63

Zooey Deschanel photo
Richard Dawkins photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Joe Strummer photo

“I'd define it as self-awareness: an ability to trust your own judgment. An ability to see through veils of bullshit or spins on stories or propaganda. Maybe an ability to think for yourself.”

Joe Strummer (1952–2002) British musician, singer, actor and songwriter

About punk.
Joe Strummer: Putting a Scare into he Hearts of All Things Corporate (2002)

Richard Kalich photo
Robin Williams photo
Edwin Lefèvre photo
Malala Yousafzai photo

“I think that it's really an early age… I would feel proud, when I would work for education, when I would have done something, when I would be feeling confident to tell people, 'Yes! I have built that school; I have done that teachers' training, I have sent that (many) children to school'… Then if I get the Nobel Peace Prize, I will be saying, Yeah, I deserve it, somehow… I want to become a Prime Minister of Pakistan, and I think it's really good. Because through politics I can serve my whole county. I can be the doctor of the whole country… I can spend much of the money from the budget on education," she told It appears that becoming prime minister is a means to the end she has dedicated her life to… [in recalling when she got shot] He asked, 'Who is Malala?' He did not give me time to answer his question… He fired three bullets… One bullet hit me in the left side of my forehead, just above here, and it went down through my neck and into my shoulder… But still if I look at (it), it's a miracle… A Nobel Peace Prize would help me to begin this campaign for girls' education… But the real call, the most precious call, that I want to get and for which I'm thirsting and for which I want to struggle hard, that is the award to see every child to go to school, that is the award of peace and education for every child. And for that, I will struggle and I will work hard.”

Malala Yousafzai (1997) Pakistani children's education activist

Interview on CNN with Christiane Amanpour (October 11, 2013)

Propertius photo

“Woever he was who first depicted Amor as a boy, don’t you think it was a wonderful touch? He was the first to see that lovers live without sense.”
Quicumque ille fuit, puerum qui pinxit Amorem nonne putas miras hunc habuisse manus? is primum vidit sine sensu vivere amantes

Propertius (-47–-16 BC) Latin elegiac poet

II, xii, 1-3; translation by A. S. Kline
Elegies

Harriet Harman photo

“Although it was a very close election, I don't think it was a polarised election. It was a tough fought contest but it was not a divisive contest. Although he won by a whisker I think the party will unite behind Ed Miliband.”

Harriet Harman (1950) British politician

On the Labour Leadership Election result http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/2010/09/27/new-leader-ed-miliband-vows-to-unite-labour-as-party-face-elections-to-decide-who-sits-in-shadow-cabinet-86908-22590365/, September 27, 2010.

James Weldon Johnson photo
Samuel Butler photo
Ann Coulter photo
Friedrich Hayek photo
Laisenia Qarase photo

“I think it would be a pity if Chaudhry brushed aside majority Fijian opinion on a major issue. He has done this before and it will be a sad day for Fiji if he does that again this time.”

Laisenia Qarase (1941) Prime Minister of Fiji

Additional remarks about the proposed Reconciliation and Unity Commission, Response to continuing opposition to the Reconciliation, Tolerance, and Unity Bill, 30 July 2005

Frank Gehry photo
Richard Matheson photo
Marlon Brando photo

“You are very attractive, but the coat you're wearing makes me think you are either a very rich woman or a very rich man's mistress.”

Marlon Brando (1924–2004) American screen and stage actor

Stated to Ashraf Pahlavi of Iran, as quoted in Faces in a Mirror (1980) by Ashraf Pahlavi, p. 129

Mike Tyson photo
Hendrik Lorentz photo

“I cannot refrain… from expressing my surprise that, according to the report in The Times there should be so much complaint about the difficulty of understanding the new theory. It is evident that Einstein's little book "About the Special and the General Theory of Relativity in Plain Terms," did not find its way into England during wartime. Any one reading it will, in my opinion, come to the conclusion that the basic ideas of the theory are really clear and simple; it is only to be regretted that it was impossible to avoid clothing them in pretty involved mathematical terms, but we must not worry about that. …
The Newtonian theory remains in its full value as the first great step, without which one cannot imagine the development of astronomy and without which the second step, that has now been made, would hardly have been possible. It remains, moreover, as the first, and in most cases, sufficient, approximation. It is true that, according to Einstein's theory, because it leaves us entirely free as to the way in which we wish to represent the phenomena, we can imagine an idea of the solar system in which the planets follow paths of peculiar form and the rays of light shine along sharply bent lines—think of a twisted and distorted planetarium—but in every case where we apply it to concrete questions we shall so arrange it that the planets describe almost exact ellipses and the rays of light almost straight lines.
It is not necessary to give up entirely even the ether. …according to the Einstein theory, gravitation itself does not spread instantaneously, but with a velocity that at the first estimate may be compared with that of light. …In my opinion it is not impossible that in the future this road, indeed abandoned at present, will once more be followed with good results, if only because it can lead to the thinking out of new experimental tests. Einstein's theory need not keep us from so doing; only the ideas about the ether must accord with it.”

Hendrik Lorentz (1853–1928) Dutch physicist

Theory of Relativity: A Concise Statement (1920)

Dante Gabriel Rossetti photo
Herta Müller photo
Robert Sheckley photo
Connie Willis photo
Jackie DeShannon photo

“She'll turn her music on you
You won't have to think twice
She's pure as New York snow
She's got Bette Davis eyes”

Jackie DeShannon (1941) American singer-songwriter

"Bette Davis Eyes" (1975); written with Donna Weiss

John Calvin photo
Benito Mussolini photo

“We declare war against socialism, not because it is socialism, but because it has opposed nationalism…. We intend to be an active minority, attract the proletariat away from the official Socialist party. But if the middle class thinks that we are going to be their lightning rods, they are mistaken.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

Mussolini’s speech in Milan (March 23, 1919), quoted in Stanislao G. Pugliese, Fascism, Anti-fascism, and the Resistance in Italy: 1919 to the Present, Oxford, England, UK, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., (2004) p. 43
1910s

Revilo P. Oliver photo
David Bohm photo
Bhakti Tirtha Swami photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Kurt Russell photo
Vātsyāyana photo
Victor Villaseñor photo
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay photo

“I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in the country, such high moral values, people of such caliber, that I do not think we would conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

This quotation is commonly said to have been spoken by Macaulay during a speech to the British Parliament in 1835. Since Macaulay was in India at the time, it is more likely to have come from his Minute on Indian Education http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/macaulay/txt_minute_education_1835.html. However, these words do not appear in that text. According to Koenraad Elst http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/hinduism/macaulay.html, these words were printed in The Awakening Ray, Vol. 4, No. 5, published by the Gnostic Center, preceded by: "His words were to the effect." Burjor Avari cites this misattribution as an example of "tampering with historical evidence" in India: The Ancient Past ISBN 9780415356169, pp. 19–20), writes: "No proof of this statement has been found in any of the volumes containing the writings and speeches of Macaulay. In a journal in which the extract appeared, the writer did not reproduce the exact wording of the Minutes, but merely paraphrased them, using the qualifying phrase: ‘His words were to the effect.:’ This is extremely mischievous, as numerous interpretations can be drawn from the Minutes." For a full discussion, see Koenraad Elst, The Argumentative Hindu (2012) Chapter 3
Misattributed

Joey Comeau photo
Steve Lyons photo
Peter Sloterdijk photo

“All lasting change is preceded by changed thinking. Any other type of change will only be temporary.”

Tommy Newberry American writer

The 4:8 Principle.
The 4:8 Principle (2007)

Frances Bean Cobain photo

“We tend to think of America's days of frontier exploration as being behind us, but that's because we tend not to think of the other 71% of our blue planet.”

David Helvarg (1951) American journalist

Public comment to the US Oceans Commission, 2004 http://www.oceancommission.gov/publicomment/novcomments/helvarg_comment.pdf.