Quotes about thought (9953 quotes, page 46)

“We must have a new commitment to excellence and transparency at MU. The leadership of the school failed the students who expected more from the great university they chose to attend. Professor Click, on the grounds of an institution that is supposed to carry the banner of free thought and expression, on a campus with one of the world’s leading journalism schools -- trampled on the First Amendment, the very sacred defender of individual thought. The actions of a rogue professor and rudderless leaders have embarrassed the university and our state. To begin moving forward, it is long past time for the University to remove Professor Click. We must renew our commitment to Mizzou, which really is a commitment to the students, who are the future of our great state.”

Eric Schmitt (1975) American politician, lawyer

Reforming Mizzou: Earning back the taxpayers’ trust http://www.columbiatribune.com/bf4d55bb-fee4-5a97-8341-2824a3baba05.html (January 10, 2016)

World , School , Universe , Time

“Home where my thought's escaping,
Home where my music's playing,
Home where my love lies waiting
Silently for me.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

Homeward Bound
Song lyrics, Parsley (1966)

Love , Music , Home , Waiting

“I have discovered a goodness and decency in people as exhibited in all the letters, e-mails, flowers, gifts and prayers that have been directed my way. I am overwhelmed and humbled. I offer you my most sincere thanks and my deep and abiding gratitude. If I ever write my memoirs, I have some spellbinding material. How does the Joni Mitchell song go? "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone"? One thing I've discovered is that I love my job more than I thought I did, and I love my wife even more!”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

"Roger writes to readers" Chicago Sun Times (11 October 2006)

Love , People , Way , Flowers

“Light suddenly caught the steel of his helmet and made it burn like the face of some mighty fallen angel. It could have been the face of Lucifer himself. I felt then that he was perfectly capable of destroying the whole world without a shred of remorse if he believed that he could not, himself, go on living. Such creatures, I remember thinking, have always dwelt among us. They would reduce the multiverse to ash, if they could. Why, I agonized, can we not recognize them and stop them before they achieve so much power? A tiny part of the human race was responsible for the misery of the majority.
I thought again of the injustices which we ourselves casually perpetrated and I wondered how we should ever set anything to rights while we continued to allow such vast discrepancy, so much at odds with the religious and political principles we claim as our daily guides.”

Michael Moorcock book The Steel Tsar

Book 2, Chapter 7 “A Mechanical Man” (p. 386)
The Steel Tsar (1981)

World , Angels , Thinking , Light

“We should judge university philosophy … by its true and proper aim: … that the junior barristers, solicitors, doctors, probationers, and pedagogues of the future should maintain, even in their innermost conviction, the same line of thought in keeping with the aims and intentions that the State and its government have in common with them. I have no objection to this and so in this respect have nothing to say. For I do not consider myself competent to judge of the necessity or needlessness of such a State expedient, but rather leave it to those who have the difficult task of governing men, that is to say, of maintain law and order, … and of protecting the few who have acquired property from the immense number of those who have nothing but their physical strength. … I certainly do not presume to argue with them over the means to be employed in this case; for my motto has always been: “Thank God, each morning, therefore, that you have not the Roman realm to care for!” [Goethe, Faust] But it was these constitutional aims of university philosophy which procured for Hegelry such an unprecedented ministerial favor. For it the State was “the absolute perfect ethical organism,” and it represented as originating in the State the whole aim of human existence. Could there be for future junior barristers and thus for state officials a better preparation than this, in consequence whereof their whole substance and being, their body and soul, were entirely forfeited to the State, like bees in a beehive, and they had nothing else to work for … except to become efficient wheels, cooperating for the purpose of keeping in motion the great State machine, that ultimus finis bonorum [ultimate good]? The junior barrister and the man were accordingly one and the same. It was a real apotheosis of philistinism.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Inzwischen verlangt die Billigkeit, daß man die Universitätsphilosophie nicht bloß, wie hier gescheht!, aus dem Standpunkte des angeblichen, sondern auch aus dem des wahren und eigentlichen Zweckes derselben beurtheile. Dieser nämlich läuft darauf hinaus, daß die künftigen Referendarien, Advokaten, Aerzte, Kandidaten und Schulmänner auch im Innersten ihrer Ueberzeugungen diejenige Richtung erhalten, welche den Absichten, die der Staat und seine Regierung mit ihnen haben, angemessen ist. Dagegen habe ich nichts einzuwenden, bescheide mich also in dieser Hinsicht. Denn über die Nothwendigkeit, oder Entbehrlichkeit eines solchen Staatsmittels zu urtheilen, halte ich mich nicht für kompetent; sondern stelle es denen anheim, welche die schwere Aufgabe haben, Menschen zu regieren, d. h. unter vielen Millionen eines, der großen Mehrzahl nach, gränzenlos egoistischen, ungerechten, unbilligen, unredlichen, neidischen, boshaften und dabei sehr beschränkten und querköpfigen Geschlechtes, Gesetz, Ordnung, Ruhe und Friede aufrecht zu erhalten und die Wenigen, denen irgend ein Besitz zu Theil geworden, zu schützen gegen die Unzahl Derer, welche nichts, als ihre Körperkräfte haben. Die Aufgabe ist so schwer, daß ich mich wahrlich nicht vermesse, über die dabei anzuwendenden Mittel mit ihnen zu rechten. Denn „ich danke Gott an jedem Morgen, daß ich nicht brauch’ für’s Röm’sche Reich zu sorgen,”—ist stets mein Wahlspruch gewesen. Diese Staatszwecke der Universitätsphilosophie waren es aber, welche der Hegelei eine so beispiellose Ministergunft verschafften. Denn ihr war der Staat „der absolut vollendete ethische Organismus,” und sie ließ den ganzen Zweck des menschlichen Daseyns im Staat aufgehn. Konnte es eine bessere Zurichtung für künftige Referendarien und demnächst Staatsbeamte geben, als diese, in Folge welcher ihr ganzes Wesen und Seyn, mit Leib und Seele, völlig dem Staat verfiel, wie das der Biene dem Bienenstock, und sie auf nichts Anderes, weder in dieser, noch in einer andern Welt hinzuarbeiten hatten, als daß sie taugliche Räder würden, mitzuwirken, um die große Staatsmaschine, diesen ultimus finis bonorum, im Gange zu erhalten? Der Referendar und der Mensch war danach Eins und das Selbe. Es war eine rechte Apotheose der Philisterei.
Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 5, p. 159, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, pp. 146-147
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), On Philosophy in the Universities

Men , God , Law , Soul

“I confess some part of me thought, If only I'd stuck around, this is the sort of catastrophe I might have created.”

Michael Lewis book The Big Short

Prologue, Poltergeist, p. xvii
The Big Short (2010)

Parting

“We had spoken about death without being morbid about it and I had told Antonio what I thought about it which is worthless since none of us knows anything about it.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Source: The Dangerous Summer (1985), Ch. 9

Death

“When I started going around with Andy people thought I had a press agent. I didn't. After a while I got sort of paranoid about all the publicity, and I holed up in my apartment and cut off the telephone for two months. I saw only two people. Then I felt ready to go out again. I want to do more acting. I like it, but it's hard — the long hours, getting the lines straight, I didn't have to do that with Andy.”

Edie Sedgwick (1943–1971) Socialite, actress, model

Edie : Girl On Fire (2006)

People

“A couple nights ago, I was licking jelly off my boyfriend's penis. And I thought, "Oh my God — I'm turning into my mother!"”

Sarah Silverman (1970) American comedian and actress

Jesus Is Magic (2005)

God , Night

“The image that creates this thinking gives rise to a feeling of evidence and a conviction that it is not based on reason. This kind of thinking explains the reaction we so often note among our contemporaries: when someone asks them to give the reason for their opinions, they answer: "It’s evident." This thinking, which creates prejudices and stereotypes, is the domain of the unquestionable. Obviously you cannot dispute with an image, and you cannot challenge the hero of a film. But this extends to the mental images produced by the film: there is no criticism or debate possible, because these involve differing methods of thought. What produces immediate assent cannot bear the discussion process. The conviction acquired in this way can only be attacked on its own ground: by other images.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

J. Hanks, trans. (1985), p. 213
The Humiliation of the Word (1981)

Way , Feeling , Thinking

“Where there's no stop and go
a thought may wet your face,
a breath arrest your stare.”

Nathaniel Tarn (1928) American poet, essayist, anthropologist, and translator

Poem Markings published in: Nathaniel Tarn (1968) Where Babylon ends.

“The investigation of the possibility that animals might think in terms of concepts and even categories of important objects has been seriously impeded because comparative psychologists have seemed to be almost petrified by the notion of animal consciousness. Historically, the science of psychology has been reacting for fifty years or more against earlier attempts to learn how we think by thinking about our thoughts. …In other realms of scientific endeavor we have to accept proof that is less than a hundred percent rigorous… think of cosmology, think of geology. And Darwin couldn't prove the fact of biological evolution in a rigorous way.”

Donald Griffin (1915–2003) American zoologist

Animal Minds (1994)

Way , Thinking , Learning , Science

“But Hitler didn't strive for the annihilation of the Jews - he stressed that fact in public life and in the newspapers. Hitler merely said at the beginning that Jewish influence was too great, that of all the lawyers in Berlin, eighty percent were Jewish. Hitler thought that a small percentage of the people, the Jews, should not be allowed to control the theater, cinema, radio, et cetera.”

Franz von Papen (1879–1969) German chancellor

To Leon Goldensohn (30 March 1946). Quoted in "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004.
1940s

Life , People

“Two currents of ideas are very prominent in modern thought and culture. On the one hand, there is an intense commitment to truthfulness--or, at any rate, a pervasive suspiciousness, a readiness against being fooled, an eagerness to see through appearances to the real structures and motives that lie behind them. Always familiar in politics, it stretches to historical understanding, to the social sciences, and even to interpretations of discoveries and research in the natural sciences.
Together with this demand for truthfulness, however, or (to put it less positively) this reflex against deceptiveness, there is an equally pervasive suspicion about truth itself: whether there is such a thing; if there is, whether it can be more than relative or subjective or something of that kind; altogether, whether we should bother about it, in carrying on our activities or in giving an account of them. These two things, the devotion to truthfulness and the suspicion directed to the idea of truth, are connected to one other. The desire for truthfulness drives a process of criticism which weakens the assurance that there is any secure or unqualifiedly stateable truth.”

Bernard Williams (1929–2003) English moral philosopher

Source: Truth and Truthfulness (2002), p. 1; Chapter 1: The problem

Truth , Lie , Fools , Motivation

“Reason does not need thinking. If you observe yourself making a plan you will notice that having fixed the object, the facts just keep coming, linking up into a chain of proposed action. Awareness is experiencing from moment to moment. Reason acts quickly in awareness, a thousand times faster than thought, and you do not even notice it is operating.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

Thinking , Time

“Certainly in Mexico, the Latin American country I know best, white ascends. Certainly, the whitest dinner party I ever attended was a Mexico City dinner party where a Mexican squire of exquisite manner, mustache, and flán-like jowl, expressed himself surprised, so surprised, to learn that I am a writer. One thought he would never get over it. Un escritor... ¿Un escritor...? Turning the word on a lathe of tooth and tongue, until: “You know, in Mexico, I think we do not have writers who look like you,” he said. He meant dark skin, thick lips, Indian nose.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Thinking , Learning , Country

“Oh, hide me in your gloom profound,
Ye solemn seats of holy pain!
Take me, cowl'd forms, and fence me round,
Till I possess my soul again;
Till free my thoughts before me roll,
Not chafed by hourly false control!”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse (1855)

Pain , Soul , Falseness

““I’m afraid not. According to the law, you must leave here at once.”
“But they’ll kill me!”
“That’s very true,” Frendlyer said. “Unfortunately, it can’t be helped. A victim, by definition, is one who is to be killed.”
“I thought this was a protective organization.”
“It is. But we protect rights, not victims. Your rights are not being violated.“”

Robert Sheckley book The Status Civilization

Source: The Status Civilization (1960), Chapter 3 (p. 19)

Law , Help

“Ah, by what Fates
Hath he been toss'd? what Battles he relates!
Were I not fix'd, did not my changeless Vow
All thoughts of second Marriage dis-allow,
Since my first Love by Death deceiv'd me…
I had perhaps with this one Crime comply'd.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Æneis

Love , Death , Fate , Marriage

“In the early eighties, savvy Japanese had been scouring Melrose for old leather jackets and jukeboxes, and nervous tourists would drive by to look at the punks with green mohawks; now the funny hairstyles looked as if they’d been done at the Beverly Center. Like a government-subsidized avant-garde, Sullivan had thought as he’d tooled his old van down the crowded avenue, affluent disenfranchisement is just galvanic twitching in a dead frog’s leg.”

Tim Powers book Expiration Date

Source: Expiration Date (1995), Chapter 15 (p. 100)

Dead

“That war in the early 1990s changed a lot for me. I never thought I would see, in Europe, a full-dress reprise of internment camps, the mass murder of civilians, the reinstitution of torture and rape as acts of policy. And I didn't expect so many of my comrades to be indifferent – or even take the side of the fascists. It was a time when many people on the left were saying 'Don't intervene, we'll only make things worse' or, 'Don't intervene, it might destabilise the region. And I thought – destabilisation of fascist regimes is a good thing. Why should the left care about the stability of undemocratic regimes? Wasn't it a good thing to destabilise the regime of General Franco? It was a time when the left was mostly taking the conservative, status quo position – leave the Balkans alone, leave Milosevic alone, do nothing. And that kind of conservatism can easily mutate into actual support for the aggressors. Weimar-style conservatism can easily mutate into National Socialism. So you had people like Noam Chomsky's co-author Ed Herman go from saying 'Do nothing in the Balkans', to actually supporting Milosevic, the most reactionary force in the region. That's when I began to first find myself on the same side as the neocons. I was signing petitions in favour of action in Bosnia, and I would look down the list of names and I kept finding, there's Richard Perle. There's Paul Wolfowitz. That seemed interesting to me. These people were saying that we had to act. Before, I had avoided them like the plague, especially because of what they said about General Sharon and about Nicaragua. But nobody could say they were interested in oil in the Balkans, or in strategic needs, and the people who tried to say that – like Chomsky – looked ridiculous. So now I was interested.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

"In enemy territory? An interview with Christopher Hitchens." http://www.johannhari.com/2004/09/23/in-enemy-territory-an-interview-with-christopher-hitchens, Interview with Johann Hari (2004-09-23): On the Bosnian War
2000s, 2004

War , People , Support , Change

“I thought that the evidence against your claims about me would shame you into changing your behavior. But, five years since you started misrepresenting my role in the founding of Wikipedia, you’re still at it.”

Larry Sanger (1968) American former professor, co-founder of Wikipedia, founder of Citizendium and other projects

"An open letter to Jimmy Wales" Citizendium.org (8 April 2009) http://blog.citizendium.org/2009/04/08/an-open-letter-to-jimmy-wales-copy/.

Behavior , Change

“You cannot work too hard at poetry. People are bad at it not because they have tin ears, but because they simply don't have the faintest idea how much work goes into it. It's not as if you're ordering a pizza or doing something that requires direct communication in a very banal way. But it seems these days the only people who spend time over things are retired people and prisoners. We bolt things, untasted. It's so easy to say, 'That'll do.' Everyone's in a hurry. People are intellectually lazy, morally lazy, ethically lazy… All the time. When people get angry with a traffic warden they don't stop and think what it would be like to be a traffic warden or how annoying it would be if people could park wherever they liked. People talk lazily about how hypocritical politicians are. But everyone is. On the one hand we hate that petrol is expensive and on the other we go on about global warming. We abrogate the responsibility for thought and moral decisions onto others and then have the luxury of saying it's not good enough.”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

Interview with The Daily Telegraph promoting his book The Ode Less Travelled. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3647424/The-would-be-don.html
2000s

Hate , People , Way , Communication

“You do not understand the dimensions into which your own thoughts drop, for they continue their own existence, and others look up to them and view them like stars. I am telling you that your own thoughts and mental actions appear to inhabitants of other systems like the stars and planets within your own; and those inhabitants do not perceive what lies within and behind the stars in their own heavens.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The Seth Material (1970), p. 312

Star , Understanding , Appearance

“Nature, not content with denying to Mr — the faculty of thought, has endowed him with the faculty of writing.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

From a list of insults drafted by A E Housman, and posthumously published in Laurence Housman's A. E. H. (1937) pp. 89-90. The name was left blank in the original, but was intended to be filled in and used when a suitable subject should turn up.

Nature

“Whenever human beings don't know what to do, they call in the soldiers. Force ends everything, yes? That's what they did with Christ, Mr. Sharpe, they called in the soldiers. They didn't know what to do with him so they called on men like you and I don't suppose they thought twice about what they were doing, they just banged in the nails. You'd have done that, wouldn't you?”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Reverend Doctor Patrick Curtis, p. 223
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Sword (1983)

Men , Christ

“We were passers on the street,
I never thought we'd meet until I said,
"How do you do, my love?”

Pete Yorn (1974) American musician

Simonize
Song lyrics

Love

“The opening plenary of this Forum will be presenting an overview of the global forces affecting the quality of life of the human community and the challenges they pose for the global community as a whole and for women in particular as we approach the twenty-first century. However, with true womanly understanding, the Convener of this Forum suggested that among these global forces and challenges, I might wish to concentrate on those matters which occupy all my waking thoughts these days: peace, security, human rights and democracy. I would like to discuss these issues particularly in the context of the participation of women in politics and governance.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

Opening Keynote Address at NGO Forum on Women, Beijing China (1995)

Life , Women , Peace , Democracy

“Even the death of Friends will inspire us as much as their lives. They will leave consolation to the mourners, as the rich leave money to defray the expenses of their funerals, and their memories will be incrusted over with sublime and pleasing thoughts, as monuments of other men are overgrown with moss; for our Friends have no place in the graveyard.”

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

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Wednesday

Death , Men , Money , Memory

“Since the abortive coup, Erdogan has been acting like a wounded giant, moving in every direction, hitting everyone in sight and groping for ghosts in the dark. To impose his image as a man of action he has ordered thousands of arrests, massive purges and favor-distribution on a gargantuan scale. He has also put into circulation a dime-a-dozen ideas for constitutional and judicial reform. In the process he has ignored another lesson of Mazrban Nameh: to think as a man of action but to act as a man of thought.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Opinion: Turkey – Towards a “One and a Half Party” System http://english.aawsat.com/2016/08/article55355819/opinion-turkey-towards-one-half-party-system, Ashraq Al-Awsat (5 Aug, 2016).

Idea , Thinking

“The reflection of nature in man’s thought must be understood not lifelessly but in the eternal process of movement, the arising of contradictions and their solution.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1908)

Nature

“When I first made a grid I happened to be thinking of the innocence of trees and then this grid came into my mind and I thought it represented innocence, and I still do, and so I painted it and then I was satisfied. I thought, this is my vision.”

Agnes Martin (1912–2004) American artist

interview by Suzan Campbell, May 15, 1989; transcript in 'Archives of American Art', The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
One of her first grid paintings she made in New York in 1964, it was [ https://www.moma.org/collection/works/78361 titled 'The Tree']. Martin often described this painting as her first grid. In fact, she had been making them since at least the beginning of 1960's
1980 - 2000

Thinking , Tree , Painting

“Social morality requires a shared matrix of communal reality to which to relate thought and deed, and the illusion of an objective ethical esthetic requires at the very least the conviction that objective reality is more than a contradiction in terms.”

Norman Spinrad book The Void Captain's Tale

Source: The Void Captain's Tale (1983), Chapter 14 (p. 177)

Communication , Reality

“"It looks as if you need only enter the field for long enough to recognise the bannus and take hold of it. Then you order it to stop."
"Fight my way through a mob of dancing girls and snatch the dulcimer off the leading damsel," Reigner Two said morbidly. "I can just see myself. I think the fools who invented this thing might have thought of a simpler way to stop it. What's wrong with a red switch?"”

Diana Wynne Jones book Hexwood

Source: Hexwood (1993), p. 138.

Fools , Way , Girl , Thinking

“First of all, why a descent into novelty rather than an ascent? It was my thing to do as I wanted to do it, and it seemed to me—the way I thought of time was I thought of it like a river. And so I thought of it as flowing toward its lowest level. And I thought of history as a river and Eternity as the ocean. So naturally history flows downhill to reach Eternity. I also like the fact that when the descent in elevation is rapid, the river runs faster, and when the landscape is almost flat, the river broadens out and meanders. So it was to preserve this idea of time as a fluid. The other reason is a mathematical reason. It has to do with the fact that if we have novelty moving downward, then the maximum of novelty is zero.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Talk at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, NYC https://web.archive.org/web/20120429183018/http://www.abrupt.org/abruptlog/logos/terence-mckenna-at-saint-johns-2785/ 25 April 1996

Way , History , Mathematics , Idea

“But hushed be every thought that springs
From out the bitterness of things.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Elegiac Stanzas. Addressed to Sir G.H.B., st. 7 (1824).

Spring

“I am not liked as a President by the politicians in office, in the press, or in Congress. But I am content to abide the judgment — the sober second thought — of the people.”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

Diary (1 March 1878)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

People

“Heathrow the next morning looked like one of those bad science fiction movies "set in the near future" after the security forces have taken over the state. Two armored personnel carriers were parked outside the terminal. A dozen men with Rambo machine guns and bad haircuts patrolled outside. Vast lines of passengers queued to be frisked and X-rayed, carrying their shoes in one hand and their pathetic tolietries in a clear plastic bag in the other. Travel is sold as freedom, but we were free as lab rats. This is how they'll manage the next holocaust, I thought, as I shuffled forward in my stockinged feet: they'll simply issue us with air tickets and we'll do whatever we're told.”

Robert Harris book The Ghost

Source: The Ghost (2007), Ch. 3.

Men , Shoe , Travel , Freedom

“My spirit is old; and some black lot awaits me
On my long road.
Some dream accurst, inveterate, suffocates me
Still with its load.
So young – yet hosts of dreadful thoughts appal me,
Sick and opprest.
Come! and from shadowy phantoms disenthral me,
Friend.”

Alexander Blok (1880–1921) poet

"My Spirit is Old" (1899); translation from Oliver Elton Verse from Pushkin and Others (London: E. Arnold, 1935) p. 175.

Dreams

“I cannot see why it is necessary that every deduction from algebra should be bound to certain conventions incident to an earlier stage of mathematical learning, even supposing them to have been consistently used up to the point in question. I should not care if any one thought this treatise unalgebraical, but should only ask whether the premises were admissible and the conclusions logical.”

Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) British mathematician, philosopher and university teacher (1806-1871)

Advertisement, p.3
The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836)

Mathematics , Question , Learning

“In recent times no problem has been more puzzling to thoughtful people than why, in a troubled world, we make such poor use of our affluence.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Affluent Society

Source: The Affluent Society (1958), Chapter 12, Section VII, p. 145

People , World , Problem , Time

“Society is eliminating the prerogatives and privileges of feudal. aristocratic culture together with its content. The fact that the transcending truths of the fine arts, the aesthetics of life and thought, were accessible only to the few wealthy and educated was the fault of a repressive society. But this fault is not corrected by paperbacks, general education, long-playing records, and the abolition of formal dress in the theater and concert hall. The cultural privileges expressed the injustice of freedom, the contradiction between ideology and reality, the separation of intellectual from material productivity; but they also provided a protected realm in which the tabooed truths could survive in abstract integrity—remote from the society which suppressed them.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 64-65

Life , Truth , Education , Art

“I have always thought that clarity is a form of courtesy that the philosopher owes; moreover, this discipline of ours considers it more truly a matter of honor today than ever before to be open to all minds … This is different from the individual sciences which increasingly [interpose] between the treasure of their discoveries and the curiosity of the profane the tremendous dragon of their closed terminology.”

José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955) Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist

Source: What is Philosophy? (1964), p. 19

Science

“There were no storks in Shora. Lina had written this story about storks of her own accord-the teacher hadn't asked her to write it. In fact, until Lina read it out loud to the five boys and the teacher, nobody in school had even thought about storks.”

Meindert DeJong book The Wheel on the School

The Wheel on the School (1954)

School , Boy , Teachers , Reading

“If I thought the Lord was speaking to me I'd check myself into Bellevue, and I think you should too.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

Larry King Live, 11 August 2005; in response to a called-in question if he would become a believer if the Lord spoke to him

Thinking

“After a few years of private retirement he emerged to pay a visit to this country, one hundred years ago. Congress bestowed upon him citizenship and treasure and he was received everywhere with reverence and acclaim. When the Revolution of July occurred in 1830 he once more became Commander of the National Guard, where his influence saved his people from horrible excesses. Again there was an effort to establish a republic and make him President. But he thought a constitutional monarchy best adapted to the needs of his nation. So he refused this most appealing of all honors and returned to his country home. His long career was ended.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Ordered Liberty and World Peace (1924)

People , Home , Effort , Country

“Some day, the world will discover that, without thought, there can be no love.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Apollo and Dionysus (1969)

Love , World

“These decisions give support to a current mistaken view of the Constitution and the constitutional function of this court. This view, in short, is that every major social ill in this country can find its cure in some constitutional principle and that this court should take the lead in promoting reform when other branches of government fail to act. The Constitution is not a panacea for every blot upon the public welfare nor should this court, ordained as a judicial body, be thought of as a general haven of reform movements.”

John Marshall Harlan II (1899–1971) American judge and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court (1899-1971)

Dissenting in Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 589 (1964).

Support , Decision , Country

“The Congress president's post is different from others. It used to be called rashtrapati in the old days. There is just one in the whole country. I felt it was important to maintain the image of that office regardless of whether or not I thought there was a case against me.”

P. V. Narasimha Rao (1921–2004) Indian politician

While nobody was opening their mouths in other parties, mouths were wide open in the Congress

Country

“If you want to be thought anything of amongst Englishmen, you must make yourself see their point of view. They don't care for melancholy people, and have a contempt for sentiment. This applies to love as well as to patriotism and religion.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Les silences du colonel Bramble (The Silence of Colonel Bramble)

Love , People , Religion

“Do you know what worship is? Everything belongs to the Lord, so what is there to offer to Him? But the Master used to tell us: 'Once a rich man went to visit his orchard. He saw the gardeners busy with their work. The caretaker approached him and presented him with a ripe papaya, saying: "Sir, I picked this ripe fruit for you yesterday. Please accept it." Now the owner knows that the garden, the trees, the fruit all belong to him; but won't he appreciate the love and thoughtfulness of the caretaker? Worship is like this.'”

Swami Adbhutananda Disciple

Source: God Lived with Them, p.436

Love , Business , Tree

“Sredni Vashtar went forth,
His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.
His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death.
Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.”

Saki The Chronicles of Clovis

"Sredni Vashtar"
The Chronicles of Clovis (1911)

Death , Peace , Beauty

“The task of thought in our time is to replace the lost religious and metaphysical foundation of morals by a secular and naturalistic foundation.”

Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.

Time

“At the root of our civilization, there is the freedom of each person of thought, of belief, of opinion, of work, of leisure.”

Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) eighteenth President of the French Republic

A la base de notre civilisation, il y a la liberté de chacun dans sa pensée, ses croyances, ses opinions, son travail, ses loisirs.
Speech, November 25 1941.
World War II

Freedom , Personality

“To occupy my imagination, which has been depressed by dwelling on my misfortunes, and to compensate at least in part for some of the considerable expenses I have incurred, I set myself to painting a series of cabinet pictures.... they depict themes that cannot usually be dealt with in commissioned works, where 'capricho' [whim] and invention do not have much of a role to play. I thought of sending them to the academy..”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

letter to his friend Bernardo de Iriarte, deputy of the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, Jan. 1794; as quoted in 'Goya and Iriarte', in Goya his Life and Work, P. Gassier and J. Wilson, 1971, p. 382
cabinet paintings were small portable paintings, which did not need a lot of wall-space and could be moved around at the owner's whim. Goya's famous series 'Caprichos' really begin after physical and probably mental breakdown in 1792. He was 46, and thereafter deaf until his death in 1828
1790s

Imagination , Parting , Painting

“My heart is with thee, Iove! though now
Thou'rt far away from me :
I envy even my own thoughts,
For they may fly to thee.”

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

(19th October 1822) Songs of Absence
The London Literary Gazette, 1821-1822

Heart , Envy , Flying

“I trow that countenance cannot lie,
Whose thoughts are legible in the eie.”

Edmund Spenser (1552–1599) English poet

An Elegie, or Friends Passion, for his Astrophill (1586), line 108

Lie

“In choosing people for specific jobs previous experience should not be a guide. I never put a man in the job which he thought he knew. Often the 'experts' make the worst possible Ministers in their own fields. In this country we prefer rule by amateurs.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Address to the Oxford University Law Society (14 June 1957), quoted in The Times (15 June 1957), p. 4.
1950s

People , Country

“Until I was nine years old I thought 'cunt' was a term of endearment”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

Definitions and objects

“Thales thought that water was the primordial substance of all things. Heraclitus of Ephesus… thought that it was fire. Democritus and his follower Epicurus thought that it was the atoms, termed by our writers "bodies that cannot be cut up" or, by some "indivisibles." The school of the Pythagoreans added air and the earthy to the water and fire. Hence, although Democritus did not in a strict sense name them, but spoke only of indivisible bodies, yet he seems to have meant these same elements, because when taken by themselves they cannot be harmed, nor are they susceptible of dissolution, nor can they be cut up into parts, but throughout time eternal they forever retain an infinite solidity.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter II "On the Primordial Substance according to the Physicists" Sec. 1

School , Sense , Water , Time

“Of course, Pupkin would never have thought of considering himself on an intellectual par with Mallory Tompkins. That would have been ridiculous. Mallory Tompkins had read all sorts of things and had half a mind to write a novel himself—either that or a play. All he needed, he said, was to have a chance to get away somewhere by himself and think. Every time he went away to the city Pupkin expected that he might return with the novel all finished; but though he often came back with his eyes red from thinking, the novel as yet remained incomplete.”

Stephen Leacock book Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912)

Thinking , Chance , Time , Reading

“If we had said 30 years ago that we were going to have only two incidents with casualties, we would have thought, 'Boy, that's great. To me, that indicates that the program has really exceeded what the early expectations were.”

Alan Shepard (1923–1998) American astronaut

Beth Dickey, Reuters (May 5, 1991) "First American in Space Marks 30th Anniversary", The Commercial Appeal, p. A2.

Boy

“To John I owed great obligation;
But John, unhappily, thought fit
To publish it to all the nation:
Sure John and I are more than quit.”

Matthew Prior (1664–1721) British diplomat, poet

Epigram (1718).

“"What's the matter with this country is the matter with the lot of us individually— our sense of personality is a sense of outrage and we'll never get outside of it."But the hold of the country was that, she considered, it could be thought of in terms of oneself, so interpreted.”

Elizabeth Bowen book The Last September

The Last September (1929)

Sense , Personality , Country

“We are so proud of our guarantees of freedom in thought and speech and worship, that, unconsciously, we are guilty of one of the greatest errors that ignorance can make — we assume our standard of values is shared by all other humans in the world.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

As quoted in Strategies of Containment : A Critical Appraisal of Post-war American National Security Policy (1982) by John Lewis Gaddis
1960s

World , Error , Freedom

“The materials collected in this volume are intended to acquaint the student with economic principles as they are manifested in the tangible facts of economic life. A few extracts of primarily theoretical character have been included to represent important aspects of contemporary or historic thought; but for the most part the selections are not so much authoritative formulations of economic laws as concrete case-material embodying such laws, or affording a background of information which the systematic treatises on economics can hardly give and which the teacher certainly cannot often assume that his students will possess.”

Leon C. Marshall (1879–1966) American economist

James A. Field, Leon C. Marshall and Chester W. Wright. Materials For the Study of Elementary Economics https://archive.org/stream/materialsforstud00mars#page/n5/mode/2up, University of Chicago Press, 1913. Preface

Life , Law , Teachers , Parting

“Someone who has thought rationally and deeply about how the body works is likely to arrive at better ideas about how to be healthy than someone who has followed a hunch. Medicine presupposes a hierarchy between the confusion the layperson will be in about what is wrong with him, and the more accurate knowledge available to doctors reasoning logically. … At the heart of Epicureanism is the thought that we are as bad at answering the question “What will make me happy?” as “What will make me healthy?””

Alain de Botton book The Consolations of Philosophy

… Our souls do not spell out their troubles.
Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), pp. 53-54.

Soul , Idea , Question , Knowledge

“Colin did not laugh. Instead he thought, Tampons have strings? Why? Of all the major human mysteries—God, the nature of the universe, etc.—he knew the least about tampons. To Colin, tampons were a little bit like grizzly bears: he was aware of their existence, but he'd never seen one in the wild, and didn't really care to.”

John Green book An Abundance of Katherines

Colin Singleton, p. 57
An Abundance of Katherines (2006)

God , Nature , Universe

“All forms of tampering with human beings, getting at them, shaping them against their will to your own pattern, all thought control and conditioning is, therefore, a denial of that in men which makes them men and their values ultimate.”

Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) Russo-British Jewish social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas

Five Essays on Liberty (2002), Two Concepts of Liberty (1958)

Men

“They met with cold words, and yet colder looks:
Each was changed in himself, and yet each thought
The other only changed, himself the same.”

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

Change from The London Literary Gazette (23rd August 1823)
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Change

“We all travelled light, taking with us only what we considered to be the bare essentials of life. When we opened our luggage for Customs inspection, the contents of our bags were a fair indication of character and interests. Thus Margo's luggage contained a multitude of diaphanous garments, three books on slimming, and a regiment of small bottles each containing some elixir guaranteed to cure acne. Leslie's cases held a couple of roll-top pullovers and a pair of trousers which were wrapped around two revolvers, an air-pistol, a book called Be Your Own Gunsmith, and a large bottle of oil that leaked. Larry was accompanied by two trunks of books and a brief case containing his clothes. Mother's luggage was sensibly divided between clothes and various volumes on cooking and gardening. I travelled with only those items that I thought necessary to relieve the tedium of a long journey: four books on natural history, a butterfly net, a dog, and a jam jar full of caterpillars all in imminent danger of turning into chrysalids. Thus, by our standards, fully equipped, we left the clammy shores of England.”

Gerald Durrell book My Family and Other Animals

On the family's move from England to Corfu
My Family and Other Animals (1956)

Life , Books , Dogs , Travel

“I congratulate you, also, upon the very favorable circumstances in which we meet today. They are high, inspiring, and uncommon. They lend grace, glory, and significance to the object for which we have met. Nowhere else in this great country, with its uncounted towns and cities, unlimited wealth, and immeasurable territory extending from sea to sea, could conditions be found more favorable to the success of this occasion than here. We stand today at the national center to perform something like a national act, an act which is to go into history; and we are here where every pulsation of the national heart can be heard, felt, and reciprocated. A thousand wires, fed with thought and winged with lightning, put us in instantaneous communication with the loyal and true men all over the country.”

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

1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

Men , History , Communication , Success

“To those who voted for someone else in either party, I will work hard to earn your support and I will work very hard to earn that support. To all of those Bernie Sanders voters who have been left out in the cold by a rigged system of super delegates, we welcome you with open arms. And by the way, the terrible trade deals that Bernie was so vehemently against and he's right on that will be taken care of far better than anyone ever thought possible and that's what I do. We are going to have fantastic trade deals. We're going to start making money and bringing in jobs.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Victory speech after winning New Jersey and other states Tuesday night (7 June 2016) – TIME transcript http://time.com/4360872/donald-trump-new-jersey-victory-speech-transcript/
2010s, 2016, June

Money , Way , Support

“In art there are tears that do often lie too deep for thoughts.”

Louis Kronenberger (1904–1980) American critic and writer

This is a play on "Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears", the last line of William Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ode:_Intimations_of_Immortality_from_Recollections_of_Early_Childhood.
Source: Company Manners: A Cultural Inquiry into American Life (1954), p. 28.

Lie , Art , Tear