Quotes about thought (9953 quotes, page 44)

“I reread that book in the summer of '03.... And I hadn't looked at that book either since '91. And I was dreading it. I thought it was going to be a really terrible novel. Everything everyone had ever said about it was going to be true.... And I started reading it… and I was surprised. It was good. It was fun. It was not nearly as pretentious as I remember I wanted it to be when I was writing it. Not nearly as weighted down with the importance that I thought I was investing it with. I found it really fast-moving. I found it really funny. And I liked it a lot. The violence was… it made my toes curl. I really freaked out. I couldn't believe how violent it was. It was truly upsetting. I had to steel myself to reread those passages.”

Bret Easton Ellis (1964) American novelist

On American Psycho
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=571852

Books , Reading , Summer

“I'd had enough. I felt so low: I was 26 and there was an exact moment when I just knew I didn't want to do it any more. I was out with two very good friends of mine, who are now dead. They both died of alcoholism. It was about 3am and I thought: "I don't want this. I have to stop." I'd felt that before, a hundred times, but I woke up next morning and I still didn't want to do it. And that was the first time in ten years I'd had that strength of feeling.”

Trinny Woodall (1964) English fashion advisor and designer, television presenter and author

Regarding Woodall's alcohol addiction; as quoted in "Acne, alcohol … and non-stop sex" by Lynda Lee-Potter in The Daily Mail (6 September 2003)

Alcohol , Feeling , Time , Dead

“All the phenomena of the universe are presumably in some way continuous, and it is unscientific to call in the aid of mysterious agencies when, with every fresh advance in knowledge, it is shown that ether vibrations have powers and attributes abundantly equal to any demand — even to the transmission of thought.”

William Crookes (1832–1919) British chemist and physicist

Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1898)

Way , Knowledge , Universe

“I thought it was so strange because I normally make these pitch-black studies of misanthropes or the occasional movie about serial killers, sowhat could the possibly see in this material for me.”

David Fincher (1962) American film director

2011 Golden Globe Award Ceremony (2011)

Study

“There's nothing clever that hasn't been thought of before — you've just got to try to think it all over again.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Maxim 441, trans. Stopp

Variant translation: All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

Thinking

“The spirit is the cause of all our thoughts and body-action, and everything, but it is untouched by good or evil, pleasure or pain, heat or cold, and all the dualism of nature, although it lends its light to everything.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Pain , Pleasure , Nature , Light

“If you examine your thoughts for five minutes at various times during the day for several times a month, you will indeed receive a correct impression of the kind of life you have arranged for yourself in the next existence. If you are not pleased with what you discover, then you had better begin changing the nature of your thoughts and feelings.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Seth Speaks (1972), p. 172

Life , Feeling , Nature , Change

“In every country the intellectual class is the most influential class. This is the class which can foresee, advise and lead. In no country does the mass of the people live the life for intelligent thought and action. It is largely imitative and follows the intellectual class. There is no exaggeration in saying that the entire destination of the country depends upon its intellectual class. If the intellectual class is honest and independent, it can be trusted to take the initiative and give a proper lead when a crisis arises. It is true that the intellect by itself is no virtue. It is only a means and the use of a means depends upon the ends which an intellectual person pursues. An intellectual man can be a good man but he may easily be a rogue. Similarly an intellectual class may be a band of high-souled persons, ready to help, ready to emancipate erring humanity or it may easily be a gang of crooks or a body of advocates of narrow clique from which it draws its support.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

Speech delivered to the Bombay Presidency Mahar Conference (31 May 1936) http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ambedkar/txt_ambedkar_salvation.html

Life , People , Soul , Intelligence

“Like millions of Americans, they're asking questions as profound as they are ordinary. Questions they never thought they would have to ask: Should mom move in with us now that dad is gone? Fifty, sixty, seventy dollars to fill up the car? Winter's coming. How we gonna pay the heating bills? Another year and no raise? Did you hear the company may be cutting our health care? Now, we owe more on the house than it's worth. How are we going to send the kids to college? How are we gonna be able to retire? That's the America that George Bush has left us, and that's the America that George -- excuse me, if John McCain is elected president of the United States.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Joe Biden's vice presidential candidacy acceptance speech at the DNC, 2008. http://www.nathanielturner.com/americageorgebushhasleftus.htm
2000s

Health , Cars , Moms , Question

“But Shadrach was a name from the Bible. And now he wasn't sure that it was right to name a rabbit with a name from the Bible. Shadrach was one of the three young men that old Nebuchadnezzar in the old testament had tossed into the fiery furnace— Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego. Suddenly he thought that Shadrach must be a good black name— Shadrach must have got pretty black in that fiery furnace. He didn't smile, because it wasn't right to joke about things from the Bible, and he still didn't know whether you should name a rabbit with a name from the Bible. It worried him.”

Meindert DeJong book Shadrach

Shadrach (1957)

Men , Smile

“Good design looks right. It is simple (clear and uncomplicated). Good design is also elegant, and does not look contrived. A map should be aesthetically pleasing, thought provoking, and communicative”

Arthur H. Robinson (1915–2004) American geographer

Source: Elements of Cartography (1953), p. 318

Communication

“The Apollonian and Dionysian, two great western principles, govern sexual personae in life and art. My theory is this: Dionysus is identification, Apollo objectification. Dionysus is the empathic, the sympathetic, emotion transporting us into other people, other palaces, other times. Apollo is the hard, cold separation of western personality and categorical thought. Dionysus is energy, ecstasy, hysteria, promiscuity, emotionalism -- heedless indiscriminateness of idea or practice. Apollo is obsessiveness, voyeurism, idolatry, fascism -- frigidity and aggression of the eye, petrification of objects. … The quarrel between Apollo and Dionysus is the quarrel between the higher cortex and the older limbic and reptilian brains.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 96

Life , People , Art , Idea

“After I had been in Canada painting the wide white barns along the Saint Lawrence river, I thought how different the life of the Canadian farmer was from life in Cebolla. So I painted [in 1945] the Cebolla church which is so typical of that difficult life. I have always thought it one of my very good paintings, though its message is not as pleasant as many of the others.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

1970s, Some Memories of Drawings (1976)

Life , Painting

“The general theory of economic equilibrium was strengthened and made effective as an organon of thought by two powerful subsidiary conceptions — the Margin and Substitution. The notion of the Margin was extended beyond [Utility]] to describe the equilibrium point in given conditions of any economic factor which can be regarded as capable of small variations about a given value, or in its functional relation to a given value.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Source: Essays In Biography (1933), Alfred Marshall, p. 223

“Both Hayek and Locke thought that this is best achieved by limiting government’s potential actions and restricting these potential actions to known general rules applicable to all. Both sought a government of rules rather than commands, the latter of which, by their nature, are not known in advance and may be arbitrary—not applicable to all. Hayek’s goal was the society of law.”

Alan O. Ebenstein (1959) American political scientist, educator and author

Hayek's Journey: The Mind of Friedrich Hayek (2003)

Law , Nature

“It is possible to be a woman who is intelligent, thoughtful, articulate, ambitious while being a woman who is maternal, nurturing, sexual and for other women.”

Gwyneth Paltrow (1972) American actress, singer, and food writer

At Variety‘s Power of Women luncheon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TttzBPTmAxc (October 9, 2015)

Women , Intelligence , Maternity

“What is found in biology is mechanisms, mechanisms built with chemical components and that are often modified by other, later, mechanisms added to the earlier ones. While Occam's razor is a useful tool in the physical sciences, it can be a very dangerous implement in biology. It is thus very rash to use simplicity and elegance as a guide in biological research. While DNA could be claimed to be both simple and elegant, it must be remembered that DNA almost certainly originated fairly close to the origin of life when things were necessarily simple or they would not have got going.
Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved. It might be thought, therefore, that evolutionary arguments would play a large part in guiding biological research, but this is far from the case. It is difficult enough to study what is happening now. To figure out exactly what happened in evolution is even more difficult. Thus evolutionary achievements can be used as hints to suggest possible lines of research, but it is highly dangerous to trust them too much. It is all too easy to make mistaken inferences unless the process involved is already very well understood.”

Francis Crick (1916–2004) British molecular biologist, biophysicist, neuroscientist; co-discoverer of the structure of DNA

What Mad Pursuit (1988)

Life , Study , Science , Parting

“The mere technical problems of building a home are insignificant when compared to an understanding and an interpretation of one's innermost feelings and thoughts concerning his shelter needs.”

Ken Kern American writer

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

Feeling , Home , Understanding , Problem

“This kind of internal "telepathic" intercourse, which was to serve me in all my wanderings, was at first difficult, ineffective, and painful. But in time I came to be able to live through the experiences of my host with vividness and accuracy, while yet preserving my own individuality, my own critical intelligence, my own desires and fears. Only when the other had come to realize my presence within him could he, by a special act of volition, keep particular thoughts secret from me.”

Olaf Stapledon book Star Maker

Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter III: The Other Earth; 1. On the Other Earth (pp. 25-26)

Pain , Secret , Fear , Intelligence

“I never thought that a person's worth came from birth or wealth, and much later when I was queen, and then in exile, I had ample proof of it.”

Farah Pahlavi (1938) Empress of Iran

Page 91
Publications, An Enduring Love: My Life with the Shah (2004)

Birth , Personality , Wealth

“Valuable thought occurred today to share. Obvious in the moment. Can't retrieve now. Didn't capture. I teach this. Damn.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

18 November 2009 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/5819997093
Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

“The thought of being under absolute compulsion, the plaything of another, is unendurable for a human being. Hence, if every way of escape from the constraint is taken from him, there is nothing left for him to do but to persuade himself that he does the things he is forced to do willingly, that is to say, to substitute devotion for obedience. … It is by this twist that slavery debases the soul: this devotion is in fact based on a lie, since the reasons for it cannot bear investigation. … Moreover, the master is deceived too by the fallacy of devotion.”

Simone Weil book Gravity and Grace

Source: Gravity and Grace (1947), p. 142 (1972 edition)

Lie , Way , Soul

“I'm not a Baptist in any formal way. I go to the Baptist church, where my wife plays the piano, on days of bad weather. On days of good weather, I ramble off into the woods somewhere. I am a person who takes the Gospel seriously, but I have had trouble conforming my thoughts to a denomination.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

The Brian Lehrer Show (17 October 2013) http://www.wnyc.org/story/wendell-berry/

Way , Personality , Weather

“I often used to sit and view the moon for a long time; and in the day spent much time in viewing the clouds and sky, to behold the sweet glory of God in these things: in the mean time, singing forth, with a low voice, my contemplations of the Creator and Redeemer. And scarce any thing, among all the works of nature, was so sweet to me as thunder and lightning; formerly nothing had been so terrible to me. Before, I used to be uncommonly terrified with thunder, and to be struck with terror when I saw a thunder-storm rising; but now, on the contrary, it rejoiced me. I felt God, if I may so speak, at the first appearance of a thunderstorm; and used to take the opportunity, at such times, to fix myself in order to view the clouds, and see the lightnings play, and hear the majestic and awful voice of God's thunder, which oftentimes was exceedingly entertaining, leading me to sweet contemplations of my great and glorious God. While thus engaged, it always seemed natural for me to sing, or chant forth my meditations; or to speak my thoughts in soliloquies with a singing voice.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

"Personal Narrative" (1739), from The Works of President Edwards (1830) Vol. I, edited by Sereno B. Dwight.

God , Nature , Appearance , Singing

“I liked beaches, swimming pools, and clinics
for there they were the bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.
I pitied them and myself, but this will not protect me.
The word and the thought are over.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

"They Will Place There Telescreens" (1964), trans. Czesŀaw Miŀosz
Bobo's Metamorphosis (1965)

“A very distinguished colleague began his criticism of this show by asking what is Mr Astaire's secret. May I suggest that the solution hangs on a little word of three letters? Mr Astaire's secret is that of the late Rudolph Valentino and of Mr Maurice Chevalier — sex, but sex so bejewelled and be-pixied that the weaker vessels who fall for it can pretend that it isn't sex at all but a sublimated projection of the Little Fellow with the Knuckles in His Eyes. You'd have thought by the look of the first night foyer that it was Mothering Thursday, since every woman in the place was urgent to take to her bosom this waif with the sad eyes and the twinkling feet.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Theatre critic James Agate in a review of a 1933 London performance of Gay Divorce as quoted in Cooke, Alistair. "Fred Astaire Obituary", Letter From America, BBC World Service, June 28, 1987.

Secret , Sadness , Sex , Night

“The object of this book is to suggest certain lines of thought as to the deep truths underlying Christianity, truths generally overlooked, and only too often denied. The generous wish to share with all what is precious, to spread broadcast priceless truths, to shut out none from the illumination of true knowledge, has resulted in a zeal without discretion that has vulgarised Christianity, and has presented its teachings in a form that often repels the heart and alienates the intellect. The command to “preach the gospel to very creature” – though admittedly by doubtful authenticity – has been interpreted as forbidding the teaching of Gnosis to a few, and has apparently erased the less popular saying of the same Great Teacher “Give not that is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine.””

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

In Esoteric Christianity: Or, The Lesser Mysteries http://books.google.co.in/books?id=XLUipprqQkAC&pg=PT2, p. 2

Truth , Swine , Knowledge , Heart

“Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On the Knowledge of Character"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

“It would be more realistic to think of all economic enterprise as a public service. Thought of in this perspective, a private economy is a contradiction in terms. Every economy is a public or social (not socialist) economy.”

Robert A. Dahl (1915–2014) American political scientist

After the Revolution? (1970; 1990), Ch. 4 : From Principles to Problems

Thinking

“And there shall be for thee all soft delight
That shadowy thought can win,
A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,
To let the warm Love in!”

John Keats Ode to Psyche

"Ode to Psyche", st. 5
Poems (1820)

Love , Night

“I was not more than thirteen years old, when in my loneliness and destitution I longed for some one to whom I could go, as to a father and protector. The preaching of a white Methodist minister, named Hanson, was the means of causing me to feel that in God I had such a friend. He thought that all men, great and small, bond and free, were sinners in the sight of God: that they were by nature rebels against His government; and that they must repent of their sins, and be reconciled to God through Christ. I cannot say that I had a very distinct notion of what was required of me, but one thing I did know well: I was wretched and had no means of making myself otherwise. I consulted a good old colored man named Charles Lawson, and in tones of holy affection he told me to pray, and to 'cast all my care upon God'. This I sought to do; and though for weeks I was a poor, broken-hearted mourner, traveling through doubts and fears, I finally found my burden lightened, and my heart relieved. I loved all mankind, slaveholders not excepted, though I abhorred slavery more than ever. I saw the world in a new light, and my great concern was to have everybody converted. My desire to learn increased, and especially, did I want a thorough acquaintance with the contents of the Bible”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Source: 1880s, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881), pp. 110–111.

Love , Men , God , World

“I've never thought much of Joe Biden. But man, did he get it right in last night's debate, and not just because he walloped sniveling little Paul Ryan on the facts. What he got absolutely right, despite what you might read this morning (many outlets are criticizing Biden's dramatic excesses), was his tone. Biden did absolutely roll his eyes, snort, laugh derisively and throw his hands up in the air whenever Ryan trotted out his little beady-eyed BS-isms.
But he should have! He was absolutely right to be doing it. We all should be doing it. That includes all of us in the media, and not just paid obnoxious-opinion-merchants like me, but so-called "objective" news reporters as well. We should all be rolling our eyes, and scoffing and saying, "Come back when you're serious."”

Matt Taibbi (1970) author and journalist

"The Vice Presidential Debate: Joe Biden Was Right to Laugh" at Rolling Stone (12 October 2012) http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/the-vice-presidential-debate-joe-biden-was-right-to-laugh-20121012

Reading , Night

“Afterward she opened the matter more plainly to M. Rise and Mistres Clarentius (if it be true that they tolde me, whiche hearde it of M. Rise himselfe) who then being most familiar with her, & most bold about her, tolde her that they feared she took thought for king Philips departing from her. Not that onely (sayde she) but when I am dead & opened, you shall find Calice lying in my hart.”

John Foxe (1516–1587) British historian

Bk. 12, p. 2098
Acts and Monuments (1563)

Fear , Lying , Dead

“I do quite like hairy things. That probably came out of my growing up in front of the television as a kid in the 50s. I saw a lot of the classic Universal films, and was really attracted to the Wolf Man - I thought that was such a cool idea. And, you know, Mr Hyde. So many things I like had hair on. So I started making hairy things and never stopped, you know?”

Rick Baker (1950) American special makeup effects artist

Rick Baker interview: Men In Black 3, werewolves and Videodrome http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/23258/rick-baker-interview-men-in-black-3-werewolves-and-videodrome (November 5, 2012)

Idea , Universe , Wolf

“.. At the end of the month I should like to go to the hospital at St. Remy or another institution of this kind. What comforts me a little, is that I am beginning to consider madness as a disease like any other and accept the thing as such, whereas during the crises themselves, I thought that everything I imagined was real... After all... I have perhaps still some almost normal years in front of me.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Arles, France, 21 April 1889; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 585), p 25
1880s, 1889

Disease , Imagination , Madness

“When I looked up at my father as a boy, I thought being a man was having control. Being the master and commander of your own destiny. How could any boy know that freedom is lost the moment you become a man. Things start to count. To press in. Constricting slowly, inevitably, creating a cage of inconveniences and duties and deadlines and failed plans and lost friends. I'm tired of people doubting. Of people choosing to believe they know what is possible because of what has happened before.”

Pierce Brown book Morning Star

Source: Morning Star (2016), Ch. 31: The Pale Queen

People , Boy , Freedom

“That is the central idea of our current tradition. It is the idealization of the mass and the negation of the individual; its panacea, its method of realization, is political direction; its goal, as always, is the undefined Good Society… The aim of pedagogy today is not to prepare the individual for his own enjoyment of life, but to enable him to better serve the mass machine; the psychologist makes adjustment to mass-thought the measure of healthy thinking and living; jurisprudence puts social responsibility ahead of individual responsibility; the concern of the scientist in the discovery of principles is secondary to his preoccupation with mass production; the economist studies institutions, not people; and philosophy rejects speculation as to the nature of man or the purpose of life as effort that might better be put to the practical problems of society. Ours is the culture of ‘the all,’ rather than ‘the one.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

Source: One is A Crowd: Reflections of An Individualist (1952), pp. 36-37

Life , People , Idea , Nature

“The properties of executability and universality associated with programming languages can be combined, in a single language, with the well-known properties of mathematical notation which make it such an effective tool of thought.”

Kenneth E. Iverson (1920–2004) Canadian computer scientist

§5
Notation as a Tool of Thought (1979)

Mathematics , Universe

“It is a tough act to follow, for sure. As I’m hearing him talk through some of the things I’m realizing why our partnership works, because we both think the world of one another. Scott is the most disciplined, driven athlete I’ve ever met. There’s a fierce competitor deep within and the passion and the raw talent that is there — the ability to move and hear music and interpret it — is unlike anyone else I’ve ever seen on the ice. And I think because he wears his heart on his sleeve people feel so drawn in and captivated by his performances. He’s generous, thoughtful and extremely insightful. He’s able to understand the glide of the blade differently.”

Tessa Virtue (1989) Canadian ice dancer

Tessa Virtue, Interview for Sportsnet.ca (January 2018)
Partnership with Scott Moir, Tessa Virtue about Moir

People , World , Music , Feeling

“[The Conservatives' Industry Act contains] the most comprehensive armoury of government control that has ever been assembled for use over private industry, far exceeding all the powers thought necessary by the last Labour government…Heath has performed a very important historical role in preparing for the fundamental and irreversible transfer in the balance of power and wealth which has to take place…The whole nature of the mixed economy operating on market forces has been transformed by this quiet revolution in a way that is not yet fully appreciated.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

'Heath's spadework for socialism', The Sunday Times (25 March 1973), p. 61
1970s

Way , Nature , Wealth

“The most powerful way of being able to listen to your own intuition is by being silent. Find a quiet space, slow down and calm your mind. Your goal is to eliminate all that noise going through your head – all those thoughts that appear from nowhere.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

Way , Appearance

“When I saw Analyze This, and I couldn't keep my eyes off him. He's great. I loved Shakespeare in Love, too, and thought the whole cast in that was amazing.”

Eliza Dushku (1980) American actress

On Robert De Niro
Attributed

Love

“Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't. Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws. You don't need a constitution to keep things up-to-date. All you need is a legislature and a ballot box.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

" The Originalist https://ww2.callawyer.com/clstory.cfm?pubdt=NaN&eid=913358&evid=1", California Lawyer (January 2011).
2010s

Law , Sex , Box

“When Shaw is read in the light of the existentialist thinkers, a new philosophical position arises from his works as a whole, a position of he himself was probably unconscious. It is this: that although the ultimate reality may be irrational, yet man's relation to it is not. Existentialism means the recognition that life is a tiny corner of casual order in a universe of chaos. All men are aware of that chaos; but some insulate themselves from it and refuse to face it. These are the Insiders, and they make up the overwhelming majority of the human race. The Outsider is the man who has faced chaos. If he is an abstract philosopher — like Hegel — he will try to demonstrate that chaos is not really chaos, but that underlying it is an order of which we are unaware. If he is an existentialist, he acknowledges that chaos is chaos, a denial of life — or rather, of the conditions under which life are possible. If there is nothing but life and chaos, then life is permanently helpless — as Sartre and Camus think it is. But if a rational relation can somehow exist between them, ultimate pessimism is avoided, as it must be avoided if the Outsider is to live at all. It is this contribution which makes Shaw the key figure of existentialist thought.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Religion and the Rebel (1957), p. 289

Life , Men , Thinking , Reality

“Take ye my solemn farewell! O, my friends,
Already night is darkening on my eyes;—
But is not Heaven most beautiful by night?
Thousands of stars shine in the kindling sky,
Which is an azure desert during day.
Thus do the gathering of eternal shades
Reveal innumerable thoughts, half lost
In the full daylight of prosperity.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Translations, From the French

Beauty , Star , Night

“I used to think I should like to be a bookbinder or bookseller it seemed to me a most delightful trade and I wished or thought of nothing better. More lately I thought I should be a minister, it seemed so serious and useful a profession, and I entered but little into the merits of religion and the duties of a minister. Every one dissuaded me from the notion, and before I arrived at any age to require a real decision, science had claimed me.”

William Stanley Jevons (1835–1882) English economist and logician

Reflections on his earlier life, written when he was 27 (December 1862), published in Letters and Journal of W. Stanley Jevons (1886), edited by Harriet A. Jevons, his wife, p. 12.

Age , Religion , Thinking , Decision

“The heart, oddly enough, seems to be the essential organ concerned. When we are in a hurry or doing something we dislike, we clench the heart, exactly like clenching a fist, and nothing can get in. When we are filled with a sense of multiplicity and excitement we somehow 'open' the heart and allow reality to flow in. But in that state we only need to entertain the shadow of some unpleasant thought for it to close again. And human beings are so naturally prone to mistrust that it is hard to maintain the openness for very long. Children on the other hand find it easy to slip into states of wonder and delight when the heart finally opens so wide that the whole world seems magical. the 'trick' of the peak experience lies in this ability to relax out of our usual defensive posture and to 'open the heart.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Beyond the Occult (1988), p. 360

Children , World , Nature , Reality

“And the redheaded girl from St. Louis who always asked about the Filipinos…Endlessly she spoke of the Filipinos, pitied them, thought them so brave in the face of prejudice. One day she was gone, and another day I saw her again, walking the streets, her copper hair catching sunbeams, a short Filipino holding her arm. He was very proud of her. His padded shoulders and tight waisted suit were the ultimate of tenderloin fashion, but even with the high leather heels he was a foot shorter than she.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Source: Ask the Dust (1939), Chapter Seven

Girl , Fashion

“He stands alone in unapproachable grandeur. Nineteen centuries roll away, and His character so lives that He inspires, millions of men with impassioned love. Other men may seem to be children of their surroundings; He became what He was despite His surroundings, and is the only one who can say in truth and holiness, "Do as I have done." He, the ideal, the perfect one of our race, appears in an age when such an ideal could not have been developed in act — could not have been conceived in thought. In the theory of development the perfection of humanity is the final result of man's history ages hence. Christ therefore is the great miracle which more than any other establishes the fact of miracles. Christ Himself is proof of His own miracles.”

Richard Reynolds (bishop) (1674–1743) Bishop of Lincoln

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 57.

Love , Men , Children , Truth

“Well, I didn't ever think about Australia much. To me Australia had never been very interesting, it was just something that happened in the background. It was Neighbours and Crocodile Dundee movies and things that never really registered with me and I didn't pay any attention to it at all. I went out there in 1992, as I was invited to the Melbourne Writers Festival, and I got there and realised almost immediately that this was a really really interesting country and I knew absolutely nothing about it. As I say in the book, the thing that really struck me was that they had this prime minister who disappeared in 1967, Harold Holt and I had never heard about this. I should perhaps tell you because a lot of other people haven't either. In 1967 Harold Holt was prime minister and he was walking along a beach in Victoria just before Christmas and decided impulsively to go for a swim and dove into the water and swam about 100 feet out and vanished underneath the waves, presumably pulled under by the ferocious undertow or rips as they are called, that are a feature of so much of the Australian coastline. In any case, his body was never found. Two things about that amazed me. The first is that a country could just lose a prime minister — that struck me as a really quite special thing to do — and the second was that I had never heard of this. I could not recall ever having heard of this. I was sixteen years old in 1967. I should have known about it and I just realised that there were all these things about Australia that I had never heard about that were actually very very interesting. The more I looked into it, the more I realised that it is a fascinating place. The thing that really endeared Australia to me about Harold Holt's disappearance was not his tragic drowning, but when I learned that about a year after he disappeared the City of Melbourne, his home town, decided to commemorate him in some appropriate way and named a municipal swimming pool after him. I just thought: this is a great country.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

The pool was under construction before he disappeared and is located in the electorate he represented.
Interview with Stanford's Newsletter (June 2001)

People , Books , Way , Home

“It obliges one to think with a particular kind of logic and severity. If it is nonsense, it will not go into Latin…I regard it as cruelty to the young to deprive them of that insight into language…Who would have thought Thatcher would be responsible for introducing the Prussian system, of dictating from central government the content of education in the supposed interest of the state? Translation into Latin was the great stamp and mark of English classical scholarship…My fatal decision was not to be pedantic and leave it in Latin. I had written Et Tiberim multo spumantem sanguine cerno: from Virgil in the Aeneid.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

And at the last minute I said, 'I can't put that out in Latin, that's pedantic'...In Latin, it would have been lost.
Interview with Valerie Grove, The Times (6 August 1993), p. 15
1990s

Education , Thinking , Decision

“The best way, of course, to understand the animator is to see that he parallels the actor. He has the same responsibility a fine actor has. […] Even the people who write about animation just don't seem to understand that when you have a drawing, you don't have a character. […] "This is the first Bugs Bunny" has no meaning. It's how Bugs came to stand and move and act, and what his feelings were, and his thoughts, and what kind of personality he was. That developed over a period of time. And you need fine animators to do that.”

Chuck Jones (1912–2002) American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films

Adamson, "Witty Birds and Well-Drawn Cats", 61.

People , Way , Feeling , Understanding

“What we find in life is based on where we put our attention. When we focus on the small worlds our thoughts create, we miss out on the beauty and possibilities we are meant to enjoy.”

Guy Finley (1949) American self-help writer, philosopher, and spiritual teacher, and former professional songwriter and musician

The Intimate Enemy

Life , World , Beauty

“A particular thought is not the same as a concentrated, creative thought, which is actually a feeling of inward-looking calm. The former produces a descriptive and morpho-plastic art, the latter a purely plastic manifestation. It is a question of the universal versus the individual. [Mondrian refers to André Gide's 'Dada', in 'Nouvelle Revue Francaise', 1 April 1920]”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

As quoted by the editors of 'The New Art – The New Life', op. cit. (Intro., note 1), p. 395, note 8
1920's

Art , Feeling , Question , Universe

“I don't think that you're born with gut [instinct], a gut matures and gets better and better over time, the struggle that most people have is learning to listen to it. Figuring out how to access it in some way. What I found is that even thought I'm an engineer and an analytical person at heart the most important decisions I've made had nothing to do with any of that. They were always based on intuition. The Apple one [choosing to leave Compaq to take the job at Apple in 1998] is a prime example of that. I remember forming my list of pluses and minuses and I could not get the chart to work out the way I wanted it to. Because I wanted something to say this says I should go to Apple. But it would not. Nothing financially would do that, I talked to people I trusted, that knew me, and they said: 'This is not what you should do'. It wasn't so easy. People said, you're just crazy, you're working for the top PC company in the world, how could you even think of doing it, you've lost your mind. And yet that voice said, 'Go West young man, Go West.”

Tim Cook (1960) American business executive

And some times you just have to go for it.
macworld.co.uk http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/apple/apples-tim-cook-following-instinct-finding-best-people-treating-people-fairly-3451130/

People , World , Way , Thinking

“A crowd, proportionately to its size, magnifies all that in its units pertains to the emotions, and diminishes all that in them pertains to thought.”

Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) English writer

Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. IX

“He was, she thought, as beautiful as a young god, lying on his side among the grass and flowers”

Alice Borchardt (1939–2007) American fiction writer

The Raven Warrior

God , Beauty , Flowers , Lying

“Man has such a capacity for rationalization that when he finds himself affluent and able to spend as he pleases he is quick to justify his most indefensible expenditures on the ground that they give some people employment. There is probably no rich person who upon quaffing a glass of champagne does not experience a happy glow of pleasure at the thought of all the vintners, bottlers, freighters, and servants to whom his simple act has given livelihood.”

Ferdinand Lundberg America's 60 Families

America's 60 Families, p. 445 (Vanguard Press, 1938)

People , Pleasure , Personality , Happiness

“INSTITUTION is a verbal symbol which for want of a better describes a cluster of social usages. It connotes a way of thought or action of some prevalence and permanence, which is embedded in the habits of a group or the customs of a people.”

Walton Hale Hamilton (1881–1958) Yale Law Professor

Hamilton, Walton H. (1932), " Institution http://www.cos.ufrj.br/~mvbsoares/ecoinst/artigos/Hamilton_Institution.pdf," in Edwin R. A. Seligman and Alvin Johnson (eds), Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. VIII, New York: Macmillan, pp. 84–89.

People , Way

“Except for cases that clearly involve a homicidal maniac, the police like to believe murders are committed by those we know and love, and most of the time they're right--a chilling thought when you sit down to dinner with a family of five. All those potential killers passing their plates.”

Sue Grafton (1940–2017) American writer

Kinsey Millhone
"A" Is for Alibi (1982)

Love , Family , Time

“Although all the qualities of mind may be united in a great genius, yet there are some which are special and peculiar to him; his views are unlimited; he always acts uniformly and with the same activity; he sees distant objects as if present; he comprehends and grasps the greatest, sees and notices the smallest matters; his thoughts are elevated, broad, just and intelligible. Nothing escapes his observation, and he often finds truth in spite of the obscurity that hides her from others. A lofty mind always thinks nobly, it easily creates vivid, agreeable, and natural fancies, places them in their best light, clothes them with all appropriate adornments, studies others' tastes, and clears away from its own thoughts all that is useless and disagreeable.”

François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680) French author of maxims and memoirs

Reflections on Various Subjects (1665–1678), II. On Difference of Character

Truth , Intelligence , Nature , Thinking

“Sometimes it felt to him as though he’s spent most of his life traveling, and never quite got to anywhere that mattered.
Then again, that might be as good a description of what life was supposed to be as anyone ever thought of. The only real destination was death, and our lives consisted of finding the most circuitous and pleasant path to get there.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 7 “Errand Boy” (p. 136).

Life , Death , Travel

“There are few, however, who devote thought and study to perfection of Divine service—to love, fear, communion and all of the other aspects of saintliness. It is not that they consider this knowledge unessential; if questioned each one will maintain that it is of paramount importance and that one who is not clearly versed in it cannot be deemed truly wise. Their failure to devote more attention to it stems rather from its being so manifest and so obvious to them that they see no need for spending much time upon it. Consequently, this study and the reading of works of this kind have been left to those of a not too sensitive, almost dull intelligence. These you will see immersed in the study of saintliness, not stirring from it. It has reached the stage that when one sees another engaging in saintly conduct, he cannot help but suspect him of dullwittedness.”

Moshe Chaim Luzzatto book Mesillat Yesharim

Mesillat Yesharim (1738), Introduction

Love , Fear , Intelligence , Failure

“I saw thee in a vision of the night
Transfigured; for it seemed that on thy brows
The heavens did rest with all their stars, like boughs
Laden with blossoms; round thy feet the bright
Green waves, like grass, ran rippling, strewn with white
Star-fragments of rent petals: wasted vows,
And ruined prayers I thought them, such as house
In hearts that love and are not loved aright.”

John Barlas (1860–1914) British writer

XLVI. "I saw thee in a vision of the night"
Love Sonnets http://www.sonnets.org/love-sonnets.htm (1889)

Love , Star , Grass , Heart

“It is easy to forget that the beginning is not the word, but the scream. Faced with the mutilation of human lives by capitalism, a scream of sadness, a scream of horror, a scream of anger, a scream of refusal: NO. The starting point of theoretical reflection is opposition, negativity, struggle. It is from rage that thought is born, not from the pose of reason.”

John Holloway book Change the World Without Taking Power

Change the World Without Taking Power (2002)

Sadness , Rage , Anger , Forgetting

“You were fool enough to think that one hundred and fifty million years either way made an ounce of difference to the muddle of thoughts in a man’s cerebral vortex.”

Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017) British science fiction author

“Poor Little Warrior!” p. 78
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

Fools , Way , Thinking

“Morals do not come from the state and society. Morality deals with weightier matters that measure our thoughts, words, and deeds against universals that are true regardless of time and place.”

Jeffrey Tucker (1963) American writer

Universe , Time

“Nor, perchance,
If I were not thus taught, Should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou, my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! And this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith that all which we behold
Is full of blessings.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Stanza 4.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)

Love , Life , Men , Pleasure

“Joenes’s students quickly absorbed the material given to them, passed their tests, and quickly forgot the material. Like many vital young organisms, they were able to eject anything harmful, disturbing, distressing, or merely boring. Of course they also ejected anything useful, stimulating, or thought provoking. This was perhaps regrettable, but it was part of the educative process to which every teacher had to accustom himself.”

Robert Sheckley book Journey Beyond Tomorrow

Source: Journey Beyond Tomorrow (1962), Chapter 8 “How Joenes Taught, and What He Learned” (p. 69)

Education , Teachers , Parting

“I liked to go at night when I thought there was a better chance of finding a fight. I was always looking for a fight. I had not known I was capable of such rage. I knew I had been cheated of a future, but I felt I'd been cheated of a past, too. The underpinnings of my life had been kicked out from under me… and it wasn't just the loss of Neilia and Naomi. All my life I'd been taught about our benevolent God. This is a forgiving God, a just God, a God who knows people make mistakes. This is a God who is tolerant. This is a God who gave us free will to be able to doubt. This was a loving God, a God of comfort. Well, I didn't want to hear anything about a merciful God. No words, no prayer, no sermon gave me ease. I felt God had played a horrible trick on me, and I was angry. I found no comfort in the Church. So I kept walking the dark streets to try to exhaust the rage.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Page 81
2000s, Promises to Keep (2008)

Love , Life , God , People

“To Donham, the case study stood squarely in the legal and cultural tradition of Anglo-American thought. Unlike French or Spanish law. Donham emphasized, English law was grounded on the doctrine of stare decisis, in which the written case decisions of the past shape, and instantiate, the law. Just as the recording of cases allowed English common law to break the arbitrariness of local law. Donham argued in 1925, business needed to universalize its procedures by itself adopting the case system. The chaos of local law that ruled in England before the common law. Donham contended, "is exactly the same situation that we have [in the world of business] where practically every large corporation is tightly hound by traditions which are precedents in its particular narrow field and narrow held only The recording of decisions from industry to industry [enables] us to start from facts and draw inferences from those facts; [it] will introduce principle… in the field of business to such an extent that it will control executive action in the field where executive action is haphazard or unprincipled or bound by narrow, instead of broad precedent and decision"”

Peter Galison (1955) American physicist

W. Donham, transcript of talk to the Association of Coll. School of Business Committee Reports and Other Literature, 5-7 May 1925. Harvard Business School, box 17, folder 10. 62
Source: Image and Logic, 1997, p. 57, footnote 66

World , School , Law , Literature

“It seemed too easy to claim that there was nothing new under the sun, that … our spear-wielding ancestors had been as wise and good as ourselves and that the onward march of rational thought had brought with it nothing but tragedy. Did any of these arguments take into account Ariane’s profile on her way up? Did they credit the impeccable logic of her hydraulic systems? And most of all, did not such bromides merely betray the resentment of a defeated and unimaginative class? I felt my allegiances shift to the engineers and technicians around me, these new medicine men who often sported baseball caps, and had a tendency towards unsophisticated humour. What astonishing creatures they were! What extraordinary horizons they had opened up!”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

[describing his sentiments after the launch of the rocket Ariane] pp. 163-164.
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009)

Men , Way , Sport , Sun

“We have ranged over all the main phases of human information processing - from information encoding, storage, retrieval, and transformation to output. We have considered the role of consciousness in the analysis and selection of stimuli, in learning and memory, and in the production of voluntary responses, including those requiring planning and creativity.
In one sense, each of these tasks may be "conscious" (if it is at the focus of attention). We may be conscious of the stimuli that we analyze and select for more detailed attention, conscious of what we learn and commit to memory, and conscious of the responses we make to such stimuli. When the required responses are complex or novel we may be aware of devoting effort to planning and monitoring their execution. In reflective thought or problem solving we may have some awareness of internal processing in the form of thoughts, emotions, images, and so forth. Whether consciousness is necessary for such processing, however, is a different matter.”

Max Velmans (1942) British psychologist

Partly cited in: W.S. Robinson (2006). "Epiphenomenalism." Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science.
Is human information processing conscious?, 1991

Problem , Sense , Effort , Learning

“…Stevens himself hating horses even more than dogs, rating the horse an unassailable first in loathing since though both were parasites, the dog at least had the grace to be a sycophant too; it at least fawned on you and so kept you healthily ashamed of the human race. But the real reason was, though neither the horse nor the dog ever forgot anything, the dog at least forgave you; and his, Stevens's, thought was that what the world needed was more forgiving.”

William Faulkner book The Mansion

Source: The Mansion (1959), Ch. 16

Hate , World , Dogs , Forgiveness

“"I would give anything to know what you thought at the moment you died," Pierce said. His voice echoed in the tomb. The flame went out.”

Michael Crichton book Easy Go

Easy Go (1967)

“Friends — They are like air bubbles on water, hastening to flow together. History tells of Orestes and Pylades, Damon and Pythias, but why should not we put to shame those old reserved worthies by a community of such? Constantly, as it were through a remote skylight, I have glimpses of a serene friendship-land, and know the better why brooks murmur and violets grow. This conjunction of souls, like waves which met and break, subsides also backward over things, and gives all a fresh aspect. I would live henceforth with some gentle soul such a life as may be conceived, double for variety, single for harmony — two, only that we might admire at our oneness — one, because indivisible. Such community to be a pledge of holy living. How could aught unworthy be admitted into our society? To listen with one ear to each summer sound, to behold with one eye each summer scene, our visual rays so to meet and mingle with the object as to be one bent and doubled; with two tongues to be wearied, and thought to spring ceaselessly from a double fountain.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

January 26, 1840
Journals (1838-1859)

Life , Friendship , Soul , History

“Seth's book The Nature of Personal Reality, stresses the importance of personal beliefs in the private creation of daily reality. He emphasizes that it's important not to be afraid of thoughts or feelings, particularly of aggressive ones. Expressed naturally and easily through body motion, gestures, and activity, these are a necessary part of corporal reality. Only when we fear them and impede their natural expression dop they back up or become dangerous.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Adventures In Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology (1975), p. 247

Books , Fear , Feeling , Nature

“Ultimately, if you accept the evolutionary theory, you dismiss ethics, you don’t have to abide by a set of moral codes, you determine your own conscience based on your own desires. You have no reason for things such as selfless love, when a father dives in to save his son from drowning. You can trash the Bible as irrelevant, just silly fables, since you believe that it does not conform to scientific thought. You can be like Lucifer, who said, “I will make myself like the Most High.””

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

As quoted in "Evolution? No" http://archives.adventistreview.org/2004-1509/story2.html, The Adventist Review (2004)

Love

“I photographed the ears. Something organic. Something from the inside out. Coming from the head. I did this ear series in New York ['Ohr' (Ear). c. 1980] and I asked people, women, on the street if I could photograph their ear. Not a single woman said no. Because I didn't ask for their face, but for something largely anonymous.... just women on the street... It only took a moment. The women always said, what, my ear? Sure! But I never offended anyone by examining them. It was just the ear. And everyone thought that was great. That was a nice experience. For me as a photographer, too. Of course, I did work with some light and hair shining in the sun... I tried to make the situation nice for the ear.”

Isa Genzken (1948) German sculptor

2001 - 2010, Isa Genzken in conversation with Wolfgang Tillmans' (2003)

Women , People , Light , Sun

“The shrine is vowed to freedom, but, my friend,
Freedom is but a means to gain an end.
Freedom should build the temple, but the shrine
Be consecrate to thought still more divine.
The human bliss which angel hopes foresaw
Is liberty to comprehend the law.
Give, then, thy book a larger scope and frame,
Comprising means and end in Truth's great name.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Life Without and Life Within (1859), Freedom and Truth

Truth , Books , Law , Hope

“When I had the honour of his conversation, I endeavoured to learn his thoughts upon mathematical subjects, and something historical concerning his inventions, that I had not been before acquainted with. I found, he had read fewer of the modern mathematicians, than one could have expected; but his own prodigious invention readily supplied him with what he might have an occasion for in the pursuit of any subject he undertook. I have often heard him censure the handling geometrical subjects by algebraic calculations; and his book of Algebra he called by the name of Universal Arithmetic, in opposition to the injudicious title of Geometry, which Des Cartes had given to the treatise, wherein he shews, how the geometer may assist his invention by such kind of computations. He frequently praised Slusius, Barrow and Huygens for not being influenced by the false taste, which then began to prevail. He used to commend the laudable attempt of Hugo de Omerique to restore the ancient analysis, and very much esteemed Apollonius's book De sectione rationis for giving us a clearer notion of that analysis than we had before.”

Henry Pemberton (1694–1771) British doctor

Preface; The bold passage is subject of the 1809 article " Remarks on a Passage in Castillione's Life' of Sir Isaac Newton http://books.google.com/books?id=BS1WAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA519." By John Winthrop, in: The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, from Their Commencement, in 1665, to the Year 1800: 1770-1776: 1770-1776. Charles Hutton et al. eds. (1809) p. 519.
Preface to View of Newton's Philosophy, (1728)

Books , Mathematics , Learning , Universe

“Interestingly, the Downing Street memo is actually being reported by CNN and FOX News. It is being discussed in the major papers. Congress intends to examine it. Hearing it mentioned on the half hour by CNN Headline News has not dispossessed me of the belief that a state suicide is impossible. Thus, my gentle thoughts are increasingly turning to murder. Murder of the state. In self-defense, of course!”

Karen Kwiatkowski (1960) retired military officer and author

" Unleashing the Resistance http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski113.html", LewRockwell.com, 15 June 2005.

Suicide

“I thought, wow, those people are showing off like me, that’s what I do at home. I can do that and get paid. That was my first realisation that maybe I wasn’t going to be a secretary or a postwoman or a lollipop woman. I did have a moment of thinking I liked the lollipop woman idea. But can you imagine? I would be like, ‘F**king move your car!’ I don’t think that would work.”

Michelle Gomez (1966) Scottish actress

An interview with the Sunday Herald talking about when she went to see Kiss Me Kate when she was seven.

People , Cars , Home , Imagination

“The surest pledge of a deathless name
Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

The Herons of Elmwood, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“It is for the philosophic student to trace the train of thought which underlies the magicians practice; to draw out the few simple threads of which the tangled skein is composed; to disengage the abstract principles from their concrete applications; in short, to discern the spurious science from the bastard art.”

James Frazer book The Golden Bough

Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 3, Sympathetic Magic.

Art , Science , Drawing , Training

“YOU ARE DIVINE. This is the truth for you, but it remains meaningless on earth until you know it. “Knowing” is the state of realized experience, and this occurs as your divine nature is given expression in thought, word and deed.”

Martin Cecil, 7th Marquess of Exeter (1909–1988) Marquess of Exeter

As of a Trumpet, 1968, p. 13
As of a Trumpet

Truth , Nature

“When I looked at the science of engineering and saw that it had disappeared after its ancient heritage, that its masters have perished, and that their memories are now forgotten, I worked my wits and thoughts in secrecy about philosophical shapes and figures, which could move the mind, with effort, from nothingness to being and from idleness to motion. And I arranged these shapes one by one in drawings and explained them.”

Al-Muradi

Al-Muradi, The Book of Secrets in the Results of Ideas, 11th century; Translated and cited at leonardo3.net/bookofsecrets/index http://www.leonardo3.net/bookofsecrets/index_eng.html, 2015

Effort , Memory , Science , Drawing

“Ooh, look at me, I’m Dave, I’m writing a book! With all my thoughts in it. La la la!”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius (2000)

Books

“One hundred and twenty acres, according to the County Clerk, is the extent of my worldly domain. But the County Clerk is a sleepy fellow, who never looks at his record books before nine o’clock. What they would show at daybreak is the question here at issue. Books or no books, it is a fact, patent both to my dog and myself, that at daybreak I am the sole owner of all the acres I can walk over. It is not only boundaries that disappear, but also the thought of being bounded.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“July: Great Possessions”, p. 41.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "May: Back from the Argentine," "June: The Alder Fork," "July: Great Possessions," and "July: Prairie Birthday"

Books , Dogs , Question

“Mr. Gladstone read Homer for fun, which I thought served him right.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Source: My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 2 (Harrow).

Reading

“I look back with pride to the great measures of social reform—Unemployment Insurance, Labour Exchanges, Safety in the Coalmines, bringing Old Age Pensions down from seventy to sixty-five years of age, the Widows' and Orphans' Pensions—for which I have been responsible both as a Liberal and a Conservative Minister. I find comfort in the broad harmony of thought which prevails between the modern Tory democracy and the doctrines of the famous Liberal leaders of the past. I am sure that in accord with their speeches and writings, men like Asquith, Morley and Grey, whom I knew so well in my youth, would have regarded the establishment of a Socialist State and the enforcement of the collectivist theory as one of the worst evils that could befall Britain and her slowly-evolved, long-cherished way of life.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at Huddersfield Town Hall (15 October 1951), quoted in Winston Churchill, Stemming the Tide: Speeches 1951 and 1952 (London: Cassell & Co, 1953), p. 149
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Life , Men , Youth , Age

“A curious horror overtook him, then. His skin crawled; the back of his neck turned damp and cold. I can’t go yet, he thought. It’s not fair! He shuddered. The void seemed to speak to him. Fairness has nothing to do with it. This will happen, and your wishes are meaningless.”

Charles Stross book Singularity Sky

Source: Singularity Sky (2003), Chapter 12, “Bouncers” (p. 257)

“The party had demanded this; Weintraub was to be a scapegoat, the local conspirator in the Reichstag tragedy. “I suppose I can’t doubt them,” he thought, as his heart pounded, as his mouth grew dry, as he felt his head become airy and his thoughts giddy. “After all, the Party has the broadest perspective. I don’t have any real sense of this worldwide operation. It’s all for the greater good, I guess. They know what they’re doing.””

George Alec Effinger (1947–2002) Novelist, short story writer

Source: Relatives (1973)., Chapter 13 (p. 208).

Sense , Heart

“He had thought the army would pay for the voyage, but the army had refused, saying that Sharpe was accepting an invitation to join the 95th Rifles and if the 95th Rifles refused to pay his passage then damn them, damn their badly colored coats, and damn Sharpe. […] Britain had sent Sharpe to India, and Britain, Sharpe reckoned, should fetch him back.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Lieutenant Richard Sharpe, p. 11
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Trafalgar (2000)

Color

“I really wanted to go on Broadway but I was like - do I want to leave my dogs, my house and my friends for nine months? But then I thought, "Wait a second. If this wasn't being offered to me and I heard there was an audition I'd be desperate to have the job." When you're offered things, it makes it so much easier to be indecisive. And it's silly because you can pass on some really amazing things.”

Alicia Silverstone (1976) American actress

Interview with Barbara Ellen: The Observer, Sunday 29 February 2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2004/feb/29/features.review

Dogs , Waiting , Housing , Indecision

“If Utrillo's paintings depicted actual scenes from life, if they were not imaginative pictorial fantasies, then the whole world would have had to be completely different. If Utrillo's representation was valid, then it would mean that mankind had regressed to an astonishing, almost unbelievable degree. All the things that Fitch believed man capable of enjoying -- dignity, solitude, integrity -- would have been experienced in the past. And that, he thought, was impossible. If men had ever possessed these benefits, they would never have given them up.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The Rebellers (1963), p. 12

Life , Men , World , Imagination

“Here we are, up to our ears in transcendence: Any organization or function is controlled by it. The building blocks for making living creatures are utilized by it. Thus, the entire world of living beings is transcended by phenomena that create finality. Natural selection working for the continuance and welfare of animals, plants, and man himself, is seen to be the grand law which organizes the living universe. So the Darwinians, who fancied they had exorcized finalism and transcendency but forgot to analyze critically the idea of natural selection, failed to see its implications or metaphysical consequences. They thought they were absolved from giving any finalization or deistic interpretation by decreeing that on earth all is but deceptive appearances; finality is a sham, guided evolution illusory. How is it possible to understand such an attitude?”

Pierre-Paul Grassé (1895–1985) French zoologist

Grassé, Pierre Paul (1977); Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation. Academic Press, p. 2-3
Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation (1977)

World , Law , Idea , Understanding

““Music is a fine thing, but metal lasts.” He struck the table with two huge fingers to emphasize his point….
As I left, I thought about what Kilvin had said. It was the first thing he had said to me that I did not agree with wholeheartedly. Metal rusts, I thought, music lasts forever.
Time will eventually prove one of us right.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 60, “Fortune” (pp. 443-444; ellipsis represents minor elision of description)

Music , Time

“The different strands of radical thought seek to lift a veil from our eyes in order to emancipate us from domination, cowardice, or repression. They unmask in order to liberate.”

Bernard Harcourt (1963) American academic

“Radical Thought from Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, through Foucault, to the Present: Comments on Steven Lukes's ‘In Defense of False Consciousness,’” The University Of Chicago Legal Forum, 2011, p. 34

“[Director Christopher] Nolan has not only crafted the best Batman movie, but arguably the second-best motion picture superhero narrative (topped only by the linked duo of Superman and Superman II). For those who thought Spider-Man and X-Men had a lot to offer, wait till you see where this film goes. … Batman Begins is a strong re-start to a franchise that deserves better than it has often been accorded.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/movies/b/batman_begins.html of Batman Begins (2005).
Three-and-a-half star reviews

Men , Strong , Waiting

Quotes about thought page 44

Quotes about thought
page 44