Thought Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

As a lobbyist, I thought it only natural and right that my clients should reward those members who saved them such substantial sums with generous contributions. This quid pro quo became one of hallmarks of our lobbying efforts.

But the cause for which we fought was higher; our thought wider... That thought was our power.

Joshua Chamberlain

I should prefer to die laughing, and, on more than one occasion, thought I might.

Every failure is a step to success. Every detection of what is false directs us towards what is true: every trial exhausts some tempting form of error. Not only so; but scarcely any attempt is entirely a failure; scarcely any theory, the result of steady thought, is altogether false; no tempting form of Error is without some latent charm derived from Truth.

William Whewell

So many people, you know, hit the White House with their dictaphone running. I never even kept a journal. I thought, 'I want to live my life, not record it.'

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

That neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor ideas formed by the imagination, exist without the mind, is what every body will allow.

George Berkeley

Ever since the arrival of printing - thought to be the invention of the devil because it would put false opinions into people's minds - people have been arguing that new technology would have disastrous consequences for language.

The development of the telescope, together with increased knowledge of things, brought men to see that the earth is not what man had once thought it to be.

Joseph Franklin Rutherford

One sweetly solemn thought Comes to me o'er and o'er; I am nearer home today Than I ever have been before.

The court has built a great deal of prestige, and I think is generally quite well thought of as a public institution in the country. It is always possible for the court to overreach its proper bounds and perhaps declare a lot of laws unconstitutional and frustrate the will of the majority in a way that it ought not be frustrated. In that sense, it poses a danger, but not the same sort of perhaps very active danger that a run-away Congress or runaway executive would.

William Rehnquist

No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.

Swami Vivekananda

To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere that is, you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived.

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.

Albert Szent-Györgyi

Night-dreams trace on Memory's wall Shadows of the thoughts of day, And thy fortunes, as they fall, The bias of the will betray.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I was made, by the law, a criminal, not because of what I had done, but because of what I stood for, because of what I thought, because of my conscience... If I had my time over I would do the same again. So would any man who dares call himself a man.

The work on satisfactory formulation of technical patents was a true blessing for me. It compelled me to be many-sided in thought, and also offered important stimulation for thought about physics. Following a practical profession is a blessing for people of my type. Because the academic career puts a young person in a sort of compulsory situation to produce scientific papers in impressive quantity, a temptation to superficiality arises that only strong characters are able to resist.

Albert Einstein

... this was the method which I adopted: I first assumed some principle which I judged to be the strongest, and then I affirmed as true whatever seemed to agree with this, whether relating to the cause or to anything else; and that which disagreed I regarded as untrue.... I want to show you the nature of that cause which has occupied my thoughts, and I shall have to go back to those familiar words which are in the mouth of everyone, and first of all assume that there is an absolute beauty and goodness and greatness, and the like; grant me this, and I hope to be able to show you the nature of the cause, and to prove the immortality of the soul.

Long experience has taught me this about the status of mankind with regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them, while on the other hand to know and understand a multitude of things renders men cautious in passing judgement upon anything new.

Galileo Galilei

You have never loved me. You have only thought it pleasant to be in love with me.

Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them.

Once the last trace of emotion has been eradicated, nothing remains of thought but absolute tautology.

Theodor W. Adorno

Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

That which is now a horse, even with a thought
The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct
As water is in water

William Shakespeare

No one likes to feel that he or she is being sold some-thing or told to do a thing. We much prefer to feel that we are buying of our own accord or acting on our own ideas. We like to be consulted about our wishes, our wants, our thoughts.