Thinking Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

In a bull market, one must avoid the error of the preening duck that quacks boastfully after a torrential rainstorm, thinking that its paddling skills have caused it to rise in the world. A right-thinking duck would instead compare its position after the downpour to that of the other ducks on the pond.

In my walks, I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods if I am thinking of something out of the woods?

Henry David Thoreau

We're only really thinking when we can't think out fully what we are really thinking about!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The painter has to unlearn the habit of thinking that things seem to have the color which common sense says they 'really' have, and to learn the habit of seeing things as they appear.

Bertrand Russell

A wise Tory and a wise Whig, I believe, will agree. Their principles are the same, though their modes of thinking are different.

Fine dancing, I believe, like virtue, must be its own reward. Those who are standing by are usually thinking of something very different.

Great strategic links are being developed abroad to destroy our Revolution. Those forces are trying to attract all those who have been hurt by the Revolution. We do not refer to the embezzlers, criminals, or the members of the old government; we are thinking of those who have remained on the margin of this revolutionary process, those who have lost economically but support the Revolution in a limited way.

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.

Albert Einstein

High thinking is inconsistent with a complicated material life based on high speed and imposed on us by mammon worship.

My guard stood hard when abstract threats, too noble to neglect, deceived me into thinking, I had something to protect.

We are less justified in saying that the thinking life of humanity is a miraculous perfectioning of animal and physical life than that it is an imperfection in the organization of spiritual life as rudimentary as the communal existence of protozoa in colonies.

I like thinking big. I always have. To me it's very simple: if you're going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big. Most people think small, because most people are afraid of success, afraid of making decisions, afraid of winning. And that gives people like me a great advantage.

Speak to me as to thy thinkings,
As thou dost ruminate, and give thy worst of thoughts
The worst of words.

William Shakespeare

What's drinking?
A mere pause from thinking!

By over-all planning, we mean planning which takes into consideration the interests of the 600 million people of our country. In drawing up plans, handling affairs or thinking over problems, we must proceed from the fact that China has a population of 600 million people, and we must never forget this fact.

I saw a muskrat come out of a hole in the ice... While I am looking at him, I am thinking what he is thinking of me. He is a different sort of man, that's all.

Henry David Thoreau

In fact, it comes to this: nobody is capable of really thinking about anyone, even in the worst calamity. For really to think about someone means thinking about that person every minute of the day, without letting one's thoughts be diverted by anything- by meals, by a fly that settles on one's cheek, by household duties, or by a sudden itch somewhere. But there are always flies and itches. That's why life is difficult to live.

But what is a thinking thing? It is a thing that doubts, understands, [conceives], affirms, denies, wills, refuses, that imagines also, and perceives. Assuredly it is not little, if all these properties belong to my nature.

René Descartes

Advertising signs: they con you into thinking you're the one That can do what's never been done That can win what's never been won Meantime life outside goes on all around you

Thinking too little about things or thinking too much both make us obstinate and fanatical.

Often in evolutionary processes a species must adapt to new conditions in order to survive. Today the atomic bomb has altered profoundly the nature of the world as we know it, and the human race consequently finds itself in a new habitat to which it must adapt its thinking.

Albert Einstein

I went to bed and woke in the middle of the night thinking I heard someone cry, thinking I myself was weeping, and I felt my face and it was dry. Then I looked at the window and thought: Why, yes, it's just the rain, the rain, always the rain, and turned over, sadder still, and fumbled about for my dripping sleep and tried to slip it back on.

Most thinkers write badly, because they communicate not only their thoughts, but also the thinking of them.

Friedrich Nietzsche

I'm thinking only of my illness and my health, though both, the first as well as the second, are you.

The development of general ability for independent thinking and judgment should always be placed foremost, not the acquisition of special knowledge.

Albert Einstein