Quotes about thought
page 6

“Granny sighed. "You have learned something," she said, and thought it safe to insert a touch of sternness into her voice. "They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.”

Terry Pratchett book Equal Rites

Source: Equal Rites

Knowledge, Learning

“Sow a thought, and you reap an act;
Sow an act, and you reap a habit;
Sow a habit, and you reap a character;
Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.”

Samuel Smiles (1812–1904) Scottish author

Saying published anonymously in The Dayspring, Vol. 10 (1881) by the Unitarian Sunday-School Society, and quoted in Life and Labor (1887) by Smiles; this is most often attributed to George Dana Boardman, at least as early as 1884, but also sometimes attributed to William Makepeace Thackeray as early as 1891, probably because in in Life and Labor Smiles adds a quote by Thackeray right after this one, to Charles Reade in 1903, and to William James as early as 1906, because it appears in his Principles of Psychology (1890).
Misattributed
Source: Happy Homes and the Hearts That Make Them

“Exactly!" said Deep Thought. "So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Question

“I think it's odd that grown-ups quarrel so easily and so often and about such petty matters. Up to now I always thought bickering was just something children did and that they outgrew it.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

Children, Thinking

“I thought I was learning to live; I was only learning to die.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), I Philosophy
Variant: While I thought I have been learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

Learning

“She had always liked this image of herself as too much trouble, as different, and she sometimes thought of it as a carapace that kept her safe.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie book Americanah

Source: Americanah

“I'd love to tell you I had some deep revelation on my way down, that I came to terms with my own mortality, laughed in the face of death, et cetera.

The truth? My only thought was: Aaaaggghhhhh!”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

Love, Death, Truth, Way

“Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

Tree

“A noble and God-like character is not a thing of favor or chance, but is the natural result of continued effort in right thinking, the effect of long-cherished association with God-like thoughts.”

James Allen book As a Man Thinketh

Source: As a Man Thinketh

God, Nature, Thinking, Effort

“A thought comes when it will, not when I will.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“JAQUES: Rosalind is your love's name?

ORLANDO: Yes, just.

JAQUES: I do not like her name.

ORLANDO: There was no thought of pleasing you when she was christened.”

William Shakespeare As You Like It

Source: As You Like It

Love

“Defining yourself through thought is limiting yourself.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“There's solace in the thought that I will never finish missing her.”

Jim Crace book Harvest

Source: Harvest

Missing You

“With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Motivational, Beauty, Positive, Good Morning

“Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Life, Dreams, Question, Passion

“My mind is the only sanctuary that has not been stolen from me. Men have tried to breach it before, but I've learned to defend it vigorously, for I am only safe with my innermost thoughts.”

Christopher Paolini (1983) American author

Men, Learning

“Thought can never capture the movement of life, it is much too slow.”

U.G. Krishnamurti book Mind is a Myth

Source: Mind is a Myth (1987), Ch. 3: Not Knowing Is Your Natural State
Context: Thought can never capture the movement of life, it is much too slow. It is like lightning and thunder. They occur simultaneously, but sound, travelling slower than light, reaches you later, creating the illusion of two separate events.

Life

“He thought what a fine thing it was that people made music all over the world, even in the strangest settings – probably even on polar expeditions.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain

People, World, Music

“When we were kids we always used to say, ‘Okay, whoever dies first, get a message through.’
When John died, I thought, ‘Well, maybe we’ll get a message,’ because I know he knew the deal. I haven’t had a message from John.”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

“Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Attitude, Wise, Thinking, Motivational

“The Answer to the Great Question… Of Life, the Universe and Everything… Is… Forty-two,' said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Life, Question, Universe

“There was a time when I thought I loved my first wife more than life itself. But now I hate her guts. I do. How do you explain that? What happened to that love? What happened to it, is what I'd like to know. I wish someone could tell me.”

Raymond Carver book What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Source: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981)

Love, Life, Hate, Time

“I have always thought that if women's hair posed so many problems, God would certainly have made us bald.”

Marjane Satrapi (1969) Artist

Source: The Complete Persepolis

Women, God, Problem

“Being must be felt. It can't be thought.”

Eckhart Tolle book A New Earth

A New Earth (2005)

“A language is something infinitely greater than grammar and philology. It is the poetic testament of the genius of a race and a culture, and the living embodiment of the thoughts and fancies
that have moulded them”

Jawaharlal Nehru book The Discovery of India

Source: The Discovery of India

“We must keep our thought secret, and judge everything by it, while talking like the people.”

Blaise Pascal Pensées

Source: Pensées

People, Secret

“Love can make you do things that you never thought possible.”

Phil Collins (1951) English musician, songwriter and actor

Love

“Existence is not something which lets itself be thought of form a distance; it must invade you suddenly, master you, weigh heavily on your heart like a great motionless beast - or else there is nothing at all.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Source: Nausea

Heart

“The thought, when written down, becomes less oppressive, but some thoughts are like a cancerous tumor: you express is, you excise it, and it grows back worse than before.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Invitation to a Beheading

Source: Invitation to a Beheading

“I muse again on the dogmatic assertion which I often make that the countryman's relation to Nature must never be anything else but an alliance… When we begin to consider Nature as something to be robbed greedily like an unguarded treasure, or used as an enemy, we put ourselves in thought outside of Nature, of which we are inescapably a part.”

Henry Beston book Northern Farm

Source: Northern Farm

Nature, Parting

“God guard me from those thoughts men think
In the mind alone.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

Men, God, Thinking

“If they don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Exercises

“I don't recommend shadow travel if you're scared of:
a) The dark
b) Cold shivers up your spine
c) Strange noises
d) Going so fast you feel like your face is peeling off
In other words, I thought it was awesome.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

Travel, Feeling

“Thus I spoke, more and more softly; for I was afraid of my own thoughts and the thoughts behind my thoughts.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“She had to find her own story, and she could make it whatever shape she thought best.”

Tad Williams book River of Blue Fire

Source: River of Blue Fire

“We reached for each other, and I thought of how many nights I had lain awake loving him in silence.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

Love, Silence, Night

“weren’t you always
distracted by expectation, as if every event
announced a beloved? (Where can you find a place
to keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside you
going and coming and often staying all night.)…”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Duino Elegies

First Elegy (as translated by Stephen Mitchell)
Source: Duino Elegies (1922)
Context: Yes—the springtimes needed you. Often a star
was waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward you
out of the distant past, or as you walked
under an open window, a violin
yielded itself to your hearing. All this was mission.
But could you accomplish it? Weren't you always
distracted by expectation, as if every event
announced a beloved? (Where can you find a place
to keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside you
going and coming and often staying all night.)

Night

“A sick thought can devour the body's flesh more than fever or consumption.”

Guy De Maupassant (1850–1893) French writer

Source: Le Horla et autres contes fantastiques

“Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“In my dreams I kiss your cunt, your sweet wet cunt. In my thoughts I make love to you all day long.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Love, Making love, Dreams, Kiss

“It was you I thought of all the time, I gave to them the love you did not need: lavished on them a love that was not theirs.”

Oscar Wilde A Woman of No Importance

Source: A Woman of No Importance

Love, Time

“I closed my eyes, bowed my head and thought, AH, HELL…”

P. C. Cast book Destined

Source: Destined

Hell

“Never before had she seen such creatures, though they looked much live very large, very shaggy white goats. Thin black horns punctuated the top of their long faces.

You look like a collection of grandfathers, she thought, amused.”

Tamora Pierce book Daja's Book

Source: Daja's Book

“What did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think. I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)
Context: I never thought about things at all, everything changed, the distance that wedged itself between me and my happiness wasn't the world, it wasn't the bombs and burning buildings, it was me, my thinking, my cancer of never letting go, is ignorance bliss, I don't know, but it's so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it. (p. 17)

Thinking, Time, Happiness

“He closed his eyes and sank into the warm dusk that separates consciosness and sleep, where reality bends and sways to the wind of thought, and where creativity blossoms in its freedom from boundaries and all things are possible.”

Christopher Paolini (1983) American author

Reality, Sleep, Freedom

“I know you're no worse than most men but I thought you were better. I never saw you as a man. I saw you as my father.”

Arthur Miller All My Sons

Source: All My Sons

Men

“I think and think and think, I‘ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.”

Jonathan Safran Foer (1977) Novelist

Thinking, Time, Happiness

“I had on a beautiful red dress, but what I saw was even more valuable. I was strong. I was pure. I had genuine thoughts inside that no one could see, that no one could ever take away from me. I was like the wind.
-Lindo”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

American Acheivement interview (1996)
Source: The Joy Luck Club
Context: Reading for me was a refuge. I could escape from everything that was miserable in my life and I could be anyone I wanted to be in a story, through a character. It was almost sinful how much I liked it. That's how I felt about it. If my parents knew how much I loved it, I thought they would take it away from me. I think I was also blessed with a very wild imagination because I can remember, when I was at an age before I could read, that I could imagine things that weren't real and whatever my imagination saw is what I actually saw. Some people would say that was psychosis but I prefer to say it was the beginning of a writer's imagination. If I believed that insects had eyes and mouths and noses and could talk, that's what they did. If I thought I could see devils dancing out of the ground, that's what I saw. If I thought lightning had eyes and would follow me and strike me down, that's what would happen. And I think I needed an outlet for all that imagination, so I found it in books.

Beauty, Strong

“I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“Before my birth there was infinite time, and after my death, inexhaustible time. I never thought of it before: I'd been living luminously between two eternities of darkness.”

Orhan Pamuk (1952) Turkish novelist, screenwriter, and Nobel Prize in Literature recipient

Source: My Name is Red

Death, Birth, Time

“Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end?”

Tom Stoppard book Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Source: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“A river of images and thoughts and feelings, dirtied and polluted so that no one could drink from it without gagging.”

Barry Lyga (1971) American writer

Source: I Hunt Killers

Feeling, Drink

“And all the stories had, somewhere, the witch. The wicked old witch.
And Tiffany had thought: Where's the evidence?”

Terry Pratchett book The Wee Free Men

Source: The Wee Free Men

“Vimes struggled to his feet, shook his head and set off after it. No thought was involved. It is the ancient instinct of terriers and policemen to chase anything that runs away.”

Terry Pratchett book Feet of Clay

Source: Feet of Clay

“I worship you, but I loathe marriage. I hate its smugness, its safety, its compromise and the thought of you interfering with my work, hindering me; what would you answer?”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Hate, Marriage

“For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.”

William Shakespeare book Shakespeare's Sonnets

Source: Shakespeare's Sonnets

Art, Hell, Night

“There are only 3 things that can make your dreams come true: your thoughts, your words, and your actions.”

Mike Dooley (1961) American writer

Dreams

“Some nights, alone, he thinks of her, and some nights, alone, she thinks of him. Some night these thoughts, separated by miles and time zones, occur at the same objective moment, and Ray and Mirabelle are connected without ever knowing it.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

Thinking, Time, Night

“Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.”

Salman Rushdie book The Satanic Verses

Source: The Satanic Verses

Courage

“A person is limited only by the thoughts that he chooses.”

James Allen book As a Man Thinketh

Source: As a Man Thinketh

Personality

“It was a miserable machine, an inefficient machine, she thought, the human apparatus for painting or for feeling; it always broke down at the critical moment; heroically, one must force it on.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Feeling, Painting

“Of all evil I deem you capable: Therefore I want good from you. Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Evil

“She thought there were no Gods; no one was to blame; and so she evolved this atheist's religion of doing good for the sake of goodness.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

God, Religion

“Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content, The quiet mind is richer than a crown…”

Robert Greene (dramatist) (1558–1592) English author

Source: Greene's Farewell to Folly (1591)
Context: Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content;
The quiet mind is richer than a crown;
Sweet are the nights in careless slumber spent;
The poor estate scorns fortune’s angry frown;
Such sweet content, such minds, such sleep, such bliss;
Beggars enjoy, when princes oft do miss”

“For weeks Tyrone thought he was going to die any minute, and there were also times when he was afraid he wasnt going to die.”

Hubert Selby Jr. Requiem for a Dream

Source: Requiem for a Dream

Time

“Though I may seem at times somewhat distant from you, through the gray mist of philology, I am never far, my thoughts always circle around you.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Source: Selected Letters

Distant, Time

“I am nothing special; of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts, and I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten, but I've loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Duke, Miracles, p. 2
Source: 1990s, The Notebook (1996)

love, Love, Life, Soul

“Artemis Fowl will never be secondary."

"I thought you were Artemis Fowl the Second?" said Holly.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Last Guardian

“The important thing about adventures, thought Mr. Bunnsy, was that they shouldn't be so long as to make you miss mealtimes.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

“They'd smash up the world if they thought it would make a pretty noise.”

Terry Pratchett book Lords and Ladies

Source: Lords and Ladies

World

“I'm not the world's greatest expert, but I would have thought that the wizards, witches, trolls, unicorns,… broomsticks and spells would have given her a clue?' - when J. K. Rowling insisted she wasn't writing fantasy.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

World

“Tiffany thought of the little spot in the woods where Granny Weatherwax lay. Remembered.

And knew that You had been right. Granny Weatherwax was indeed here. And there. She was, in fact, and always would be, everywhere.”

Terry Pratchett book The Shepherd's Crown

Source: The Shepherd's Crown

“Be great in act, as you have been in thought.”

William Shakespeare King John

Source: King John

“The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.”

John Ruskin book The Stones of Venice

Volume II, chapter V, section 30.
Source: The Stones of Venice (1853)

Love

“Philosophy begins in wonder. And at the end when philosophic thought has done its best the wonder remains.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

“Do ye not understand?"he said, in near desparation. "I would lay the world at your feet, Claire-and I have nothing to give ye!"
He honestly thought it mattered.”

Diana Gabaldon book Voyager

Source: Voyager

World, Understanding

“Oh, what a love it was, utterly free, unique, like nothing else on earth! Their thoughts were like other people's songs.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Source: Doctor Zhivago

Wedding, Love, People

“Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin,' thought Alice 'but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing i ever saw in my life!”

Lewis Carroll book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Source: Alice in Wonderland

Life, Cats

“It is in books, poems, paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought to acknowledge.”

Alain de Botton book The Architecture of Happiness

Source: The Architecture of Happiness

Books, Feeling, Confidence, Painting

“For me, my thoughts are my prostitutes.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

Source: Le neveu de Rameau

“Reality prior to my language exists as an unthinkable thought.... life precedes love, bodily matter precedes the body, and one day in its turn language shall have preceded possession of silence.”

Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) Brazilian writer

The Passion According to G.H. (1964), p. 169

Love, Life, Reality, Silence

“[on becoming an artist] It is my profession, yes [ to be an artist] but a calling.. that a little bit pathetic, a little bit bombastic. I think it was much more natural... I Thought – when I was a child – the only method to be not in the world but outside of the world is to be an artist. I feel me outside, yes..”

Anselm Kiefer (1945) German painter and sculptor

n.p.
Tim Marlow joins Anselm Kiefer to discuss his work' - 2005

World, Feeling, Nature, Thinking

“To [aunt] Marie Hill,
Dearest
Why do you tempt me? I really cannot. It's impossible! Be happy? The only thought I have in my mind is to immerse myself in my art, to merge completely with it until I can begin to express what I really feel – and after that to be consumed even more by it. Even if I wanted to, I could not leave here [Worpswede]… I want to live here. I want to 'live' – and develop further as a person and as an artist… Can you understand this? I think you can. And do you approve? I hope so. In any case, I can't do any different..”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

In a letter to her aunt Mary Hill, from Worpswede, June 1899; as quoted in Paula Modersohn-Becker – The Letters and Journals, ed: Günther Busch & Lotten von Reinken; (transl, A. Wensinger & C. Hoey; Taplinger); Publishing Company, New York, 1983, p. 135
1899

Hope, Art, Feeling, Understanding

“If experience is the soul of religion, expression is the body through which it fulfills its destiny. We have the spiritual facts and their interpretations by which they are communicated to others. It is the distinction between immediacy and thought. Intuitions abide, while interpretations change.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Variant: We have spiritual facts and their interpretations by which they are communicated to others, sruti or what is heard, and smṛti or what is remembered. Śaṅkara equates them with pratyakṣa or intuition and anumana or inference. It is the distinction between immediacy and thought. Intuitions abide, while interpretations change.

Religion, Soul, Communication, Change

“…when I had gone through the whole, and saw what a plain, simple, reason able thing Christianity was, suited to all conditions and capacities; and in the morality of it now, with divine authority, established into a legible law, so far surpassing all that philosophy and human reason had attained to, or could possibly make effectual to all degrees of man kind; I was flattered to think it might be of some use in the world; especially to those, who thought either that there was no need of revelation at all, or that the revelation of our Saviour required the belief of such articles for salvation, which the settled notions, and their way of reasoning in some, and want of understanding in others, made impossible to them. Upon these two topics the objections seemed to turn, which were with most assurance made by deists, against Christianity; but against Christianity misunderstood. It seemed to me, that there needed no more to show them the weakness of their exceptions, but to lay plainly before them the doctrine of our Saviour and his apostles, as delivered in the scriptures, and not as taught by the several sects of Christians.”

John Locke (1632–1704) English philosopher and physician

Preface to the Reader
The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695)

World, Law, Way, Understanding

“Old age diminishes our strength; it takes away our pleasures one after the other; it withers the soul as well as the body; it renders adventure and friendship difficult; and finally it is shadowed by thoughts of death.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Growing Old

Death, Friendship, Pleasure, Age

“When we cannot obtain a thing, we comfort ourselves with the reassuring thought that it is not worth nearly as much as we believed.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1973), p. 73

“Robin was an outgrowth of a conversation I had with Bob. As I said, Batman was a combination of Fairbanks and Sherlock Holmes. Holmes had his Watson. The thing that bothered me was that Batman didn't have anyone to talk to, and it got a little tiresome always having him thinking. I found that as I went along Batman needed a Watson to talk to. That's how Robin came to be. Bob called me over and said he was going to put a boy in the strip to identify with Batman. I thought it was a great idea”

Bill Finger (1914–1974) American comic strip and comic book writer

[Jim Steranko, The Steranko History of Comics, Supergraphics, Reading, Pa., 1970, ISBN 0-517-50188-0, p.44]
Variant: Robin was an outgrowth of a conversation I had with Bob. As I said, Batman was a combination of Fairbanks and Sherlock Holmes. Holmes had his Watson. The thing that bothered me was that Batman didn't have anyone to talk to, and it got a little tiresome always having him thinking. I found that as I went along Batman needed a Watson to talk to. That's how Robin came to be. Bob called me over and said he was going to put a boy in the strip to identify with Batman. I thought it was a great idea

Boy, Idea, Thinking

“Forgiveness is realizing that what you thought happened, didn’t.”

Byron Katie (1942) American spiritual writer

Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (2002)

Forgiveness

“This dead of midnight is the noon of thought,
And Wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.”

Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743–1825) English author

A Summer's Evening Meditation.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Wisdom, Star, Dead

“If, there is a tendency in all Western democracies no longer to respect the professional politician or even the party member as such, it is no longer only because of some personal insufficiency, some fault, or some incompetence, or because of some scandal that can now be more widely known, amplified, and in fact often produced, if not premeditated by the power of the media. Rather, it is because politicians become more and more, or even solely characters in the media's representation at the very moment when the transformation of the public space, precisely by the media, causes them to lose the essential part of the power and even of the competence they were granted before by the structures of parliamentary representation, by the party apparatuses that were linked to it, and so forth. However competent they may personally be, professional politicians who conform to the old model tend today to become structurally incompetent. The same media power accuses, produces, and amplifies at the same time this incompetence of traditional politicians: on the one hand, it takes aways from them the legitimate power they held in the former political space (party, parliament, and so forth), but, on the other hand, it obliges them to become mere silhouettes, if not marionettes, on the stage of televisual rhetoric. They were thought to be actors of politics, they now often risk, as everyone knows, being no more than TV actors.”

Jacques Derrida book Specters of Marx

Wear and Tears (tableu of a ageless world)
Specters of Marx (1993)

Democracy, Time, Parting, Personality

“What I give is the morphology of the use of an expression. I show that it has kinds of uses of which you had not dreamed. In philosophy one feels forced to look at a concept in a certain way. What I do is suggest, or even invent, other ways of looking at it. I suggest possibilities of which you had not previously thought. You thought that there was one possibility, or only two at most. But I made you think of others. Furthermore, I made you see that it was absurd to expect the concept to conform to those narrow possibilities. Thus your mental cramp is relieved, and you are free to look around the field of use of the expression and to describe the different kinds of uses of it.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Lectures of 1946 - 1947, as quoted in Ludwig Wittgenstein : A Memoir (1966) by Norman Malcolm, p. 43
1930s-1951

Dreams, Way, Feeling, Thinking

“But one only woke people if one knew what one wanted to say to them. And she wanted to say not one thing, but everything. Little words that broke up the thought and dismembered it said nothing. 'About life, about death; about Mrs Ramsay”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

no, she thought, one could say nothing to nobody.
Part III, Ch. 5
To the Lighthouse (1927)

Life, Death, People

“Honey, I jes' walked round an' round in a dream. Jesus loved me! I knowed it - I fel it. Jesus was my Jesus. Jesus would love me always. I did n't dare tell nobody; it was a great secret. Everything had been got away from me that I ever had; an' I thought that ef I let white folks know about this, maybe they'd get him away - so I said, 'I'll keep this close. I wont let any one know.”

Sojourner Truth (1797–1883) African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist

Olive Gilbert & Sojourner Truth (1878), Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a Bondswoman of Olden Time, page 159. ( text at sojournertruth.org http://www.sojournertruth.org/Library/Archive/LibyanSibyl.htm)

Love, Secret, Dreams

“Haven't people learned yet that the time of superficial intellectual games is over, that agony is infinitely more important than syllogism, that a cry of despair is more revealing than the most subtle thought, and that tears always have deeper roots than smiles?”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

People, Smile, Game, Tear

“Even in the most insignificant details of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for everyone, and need only be turned up like a page in an account-book or the record of a will; our social personality is created by the thoughts of other people.”

Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time

Même au point de vue des plus insignifiantes choses de la vie, nous ne sommes pas un tout matériellement constitué, identique pour tout le monde et dont chacun n'a qu'à aller prendre connaissance comme d'un cahier des charges ou d'un testament; notre personnalité sociale est une création de la pensée des autres.
"Overture"
In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol I: Swann's Way (1913)

Life, People, Books, Personality

“Our senses enable us to perceive only a minute portion of the outside world. Our hearing extends to a small distance. Our sight is impeded by intervening bodies and shadows. To know each other we must reach beyond the sphere of our sense perceptions. We must transmit our intelligence, travel, transport the materials and transfer the energies necessary for our existence. Following this thought we now realize, forcibly enough to dispense with argument, that of all other conquests of man, without exception, that which is most desirable, which would be most helpful in the establishment of universal peaceful relations is — the complete ANNIHILATION OF DISTANCE.
To achieve this wonder, electricity is the one and only means. Inestimable good has already been done by the use of this all powerful agent, the nature of which is still a mystery. Our astonishment at what has been accomplished would be uncontrollable were it not held in check by the expectation of greater miracles to come. That one, the greatest of all, can be viewed in three aspects: Dissemination of intelligence, transportation, and transmission of power.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

A Means for Furthering Peace (1905)

World, Peace, Travel, Intelligence

“You could attach prices to thoughts. Some cost a lot, some a little. And how does one pay for thoughts? The answer, I think, is: with courage.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Variant: You could attach prices to ideas. Some cost a lot some little. … And how do you pay for ideas? I believe: with courage.
Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 52e

Courage, Thinking

“Fear is death, fear is sin, fear is hell, fear is unrighteousness, fear is wrong life. All the negative thoughts and ideas that are in the world have proceeded from this evil spirit of fear.”

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

Pearls of Wisdom

Life, Death, World, Fear

“My dear Sir: Herewith is a little sketch, as you requested. There is not much of it, for the reason, I suppose, that there is not much of me. If anything be made out of it, I wish it to be modest, and not to go beyond the material. If it were thought necessary to incorporate anything from any of my speeches, I suppose there would be no objection. Of course it must not appear to have been written by myself.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

p, 125
1850s, Autobiographical Sketch Written for Jesse W. Fell (1859)

Appearance

Quotes about thought page 6

Quotes about thought
page 6