Thinking Quotes

The real offence as she ultimately perceived was her having a mind of her own at all. Her mind was to be his - attached to his own like a small garden plot to a deer park.

~ Henry James

To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable but to be certain is to be ridiculous.

~ Chinese Proverb

Think wrongly if you please but in all cases think for yourself.

~ Doris Lessing

The thoughts that come often unsought and as it were drop into the mind are commonly the most valuable of any we have.

~ John Locke

We shall succeed only so far as we continue that most distasteful of all activity the intolerable labour of thought.

~ Learned Hand

Profundity of thought belongs to youth clarity of thought to old age.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

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

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

What was once thought can never be unthought.

~ Friedrich Dilrrenmatt

Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed.

~ Walter Lippmann

Man is a slow sloppy and brilliant thinker the machine is fast accurate and stupid.

~ William M. Kelly

Folks that blurt out just what they think wouldn't be so bad if they thought.

~ Kin Hubbard

Facts in books statistics in encyclopedias the ability to use them in men's heads.

~ Fogg Brackell

Knowledge is a process of piling up facts wisdom lies in their simplification.

~ Martin H. Fisher

Thought is born of failure.

~ Lancelot Law Whyte

Speaking without thinking is shooting without taking aim.

~ Spanish Proverb

What you think is an illusion created by your glands your emotions and in the last analysis by the content of your stomach. That gray matter you're so proud of is like a mirror in an amusement park which transmits to you nothing but distorted signals from reality forever beyond your grasp.

~ Ayn Rand

Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven.

~ Edward De Bono

Belief is harder to shake than knowledge.

~ Adolf Hitler

The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You're encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren't that smart, who aren't that creative.

~ Elon Musk

Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth.

~ Virginia Woolf

Teenage girls these days are more and more getting lured into thinking they should dumb themselves down, and that's going to attract the wrong kind of guy, and it's serious. It's serious business.

~ Danica Mckellar

I think we have to notice that the business processes we use right now for thinking and planning and budgeting and strategy are all delivered on very tight agendas.

~ Margaret J. Wheatley

Billions are wasted on ineffective philanthropy. Philanthropy is decades behind business in applying rigorous thinking to the use of money.

~ Michael Porter

Many have built their careers buttressing the status quo, reinforcing what they've already accomplished, and resisting the radical thinking that can topple their legacy - not exactly the attitude you want when trying to drive innovation forward.

~ Peter Diamandis

It's sort of a mental attitude about critical thinking and curiosity. It's about mindset of looking at the world in a playful and curious and creative way.

~ Adam Savage

People ask what my influences are, and for me, it's not always obvious. One of my biggest inspirations was Chrissie Hynde from the Pretenders. That's based on how she just does whatever she wants to do, and I love her attitude about everything. It bleeds over into my way of thinking and comedy.

~ Tig Notaro

I utterly reject the view that the Third World is doomed to poverty and starvation. Not only is this wrong, I think this attitude verges on the immoral, like thinking that slavery is an unalterable facet of the human condition so why bother doing anything about it?

~ Alex Tabarrok

The time I spent thinking about how I was better than somebody else or worrying about somebody else's attitude was time I could put to better use.

~ Charley Pride

I used to fall into the trap of thinking that taking care of my husband and kids was more important than taking care of myself. Now I have a new attitude: You know when you're on an airplane and the manual tells you to put on your oxygen mask first and then help the person next to you? I feel the same way about my health.

~ Heidi Roizen

I just try to try to keep an attitude that I don't know what I'm doing. Not to the point where I'm beating myself up, but I just go in thinking that I have a lot to learn. And I hope I still have that attitude 30 years from now.

~ Tobey Maguire

When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.

~ John Adams

If you keep thinking about what you want to do or what you hope will happen, you don't do it, and it won't happen.

~ Desiderius Erasmus

I knew I was a winner back in the late sixties. I knew I was destined for great things. People will say that kind of thinking is totally immodest. I agree. Modesty is not a word that applies to me in any way - I hope it never will.

~ Arnold Schwarzenegger

Hopeful thinking can get you out of your fear zone and into your appreciation zone.

~ Martha Beck

As for gun control advocates, I have no hope whatever that any facts whatever will make the slightest dent in their thinking - or lack of thinking.

~ Thomas Sowell

To not be self-conscious of your appearance is huge, and something that I desperately hope to carry into film at some point in my useless life - to not be thinking, 'My ear looks weird from this angle, why is the camera over there?'

~ Anna Kendrick

Talk to people in their own language. If you do it well, they'll say, 'God, he said exactly what I was thinking.' And when they begin to respect you, they'll follow you to the death.

~ Lee Iacocca

I wanted to be the kind of woman who would attract a certain kind of man that I could respect. That was my thinking. It had to do with the kind of couple I would be a part of.

~ Lisa Kudrow

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

~ Plato

Dreams don't have deadlines. I'm thinking of doing bigger and better things and having more fun with it.

~ Ll Cool J