Thinking Quotes

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Then there are guys who say 'I have never fantasized about being with a man.' They are lying. And the least offensive men I've been with in terms of their sexual politics and how they view me as a woman, have been men who have either slept with men, or at least kissed or held a man once. It opens up your thinking. You don't think that women are less-than you are.

For the moment a lot of attention is given to economic concerns, and these problems at hand easily eclipse all others. But the remedies proposed for these problems all come out of outmoded ways of thinking... The remedy? Compassion. The logical feeling that we find in ourselves if we search deeply enough that has to be exercised toward all other living creatures.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

How often have Ι lain beneath rain on a strange roof thinking of home.

William Faulkner

I think that everything that is really good and beautiful, the inner, moral, spiritual and sublime beauty in men and their works, comes from God, and everything that is bad and evil in the works of men and in men is not from God, and God does not approve of it.
But I cannot help thinking that the best way of knowing God is to love many things. Love this friend, this person, this thing, whatever you like, and you will be on the right road to understanding Him better, that is what I keep telling myself. But you must love with a sublime, genuine, profound sympathy, with devotion, with intelligence, and you must try all the time to understand Him more, better and yet more. That will lead to God, that will lead to an unshakeable faith.

Vincent van Gogh

We were equals afterwards, as we had been before; but, afterwards at quiet times when I sat looking at Joe and thinking about him, I had a new sensation of feeling conscious that I was looking up to Joe in my heart.

Charles Dickens

These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.

Don't keep forever on the public road, going only where others have gone and following one after the other like a flock of sheep. Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods. Every time you do so you will be certain to find something that you have never seen before. Of course it will be a little thing, but do not ignore it. Follow it up. explore all round it; one discovery will lead to another, and before you know it you will have something worth thinking about to occupy your mind. All really big discoveries are the results of thought.

Alexander Graham Bell

One man will say a thing of himself without comprehending its excellence, in which another will discern a marvelous series of conclusions, which makes us affirm that it is no longer the same expression, and that he is no more indebted for it to the one from whom he has learned it, than a beautiful tree belongs to the one who cast the seed, without thinking of it, or knowing it, into the fruitful soil which caused its growth by its own fertility.

The man who does not wish to belong to the mass needs only to cease taking himself easily; let him follow his conscience, which calls to him: Be your self! All you are now doing, thinking, desiring, is not you yourself.

Friedrich Nietzsche

She dreams of him that has forgot her love; You dote on her that cares not for your love. 'Tis pity love should be so contrary; And thinking of it makes me cry 'alas!

William Shakespeare

You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking and looking, and thinking for your approbation alone. I roused, and interested you, because I was so unlike them.

The effects which follow too constant and intense a concentration upon evil are always disastrous. Those who crusade, not for God in themselves, but against the devil in others, never succeed in making the world better, but leave it either as it was, or sometimes even perceptibly worse than it was, before the crusade began. By thinking primarily of evil we tend, however excellent our intentions, to create occasions for evil to manifest itself.

The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.

In class society everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of class.

What IS is more important than WHAT SHOULD BE. To many people are looking at "what is" from a position of thinking "what should be."

We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking.

The thinking part of mankind do not form their judgment from events; and their equity will ever attach equal glory to those actions which deserve success, and those which have been crowned with it.

George Washington

The young people are the most active and vital force in society. They are the most eager to learn and the least conservative in their thinking. This is especially so in the era of socialism.

Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honorable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want.

That one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of any thing else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man, who has in philosophical matters a compentent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it.

Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings.

If we want to find happiness, let's stop thinking about gratitude or ingratitude and give for the inner joy of giving.

It is mere rubbish thinking, at present, of origin of life; one might as well think of origin of matter. —

The actual life of a thought lasts only until it reaches the point of speech...As soon as our thinking has found words it ceases to be sincere...When it begins to exist in others it ceases to live in us, just as the child severs itself from its mother when it enters into its own existence.

Arthur Schopenhauer

People with a high tolerance for boredom can get a lot of thinking done.