Quotes about thoughts-and-thinking

It was at a particular moment in the history of my own rages that I saw the Western world conditioned by the images of Marx, Darwin and Freud; and Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores of the Western world. The simplistic popularization of their ideas has thrust our world into a mental straitjacket from which we can only escape by the most anarchic violence.

— William Golding

Those that think must govern those that toil.

— Oliver Goldsmith

If I look confused it is because I am thinking.

— Samuel Goldwyn

Thought would destroy their paradise.

— Thomas Gray

A person may dwell so long upon a thought that it may take him a prisoner.

— Edward F. Halifax

In matters of conscience, first thoughts are best. In matters of prudence, last thoughts are best.

— Robert Hall

Thought is the wind and knowledge the sail.

— David Hare

How you look at a situation is very important, for how you think about a problem may defeat you before you ever do anything about it. When you get discouraged or depressed, try changing your attitude from negative to positive and see how life can change for you. Remember, your attitude toward a situation can help you to change it -- you create the very atmosphere for defeat or victory.

— Franco Harris

Every thought we think is creating our future.

— Louise L. Hay

Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts.

— William Hazlitt

There are mighty few people who think what they think they think.

— Robert Henri

Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.

— Napoleon Hill

Carve every word before you let it fall.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Little-minded people's thoughts move in such small circles that five minutes conversation gives you an arc long enough to determine their whole curve.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

Every event that a man would master must be mounted on the run, and no man ever caught the reins of a thought except as it galloped past him.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

The minute a phrase, becomes current, it becomes an apology for not thinking accurately to the end of the sentence.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

Sloppy thinking gets worse over time.

— Jenny Holzer

Thoughts are the gun, words are the bullets, deeds are the target, the bulls-eye is heaven.

— Doug Horton

The more we are filled with thoughts of lust the less we find true romantic love.

— Doug Horton

Thought precedes action, action does not always precede thought.

— Doug Horton

Life is good when we think it's good. Life is bad when we don't think.

— Doug Horton

Thinking good thoughts is not enough, doing good deeds is not enough, seeing others follow your good examples is enough.

— Doug Horton

Thought is the labor of the intellect, reverie is its pleasure.

— Victor Hugo

Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.

— David Hume

Most of one's life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.

— Aldous Huxley

Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself.

— Aldous Huxley

Sooner or later, false thinking brings wrong conduct.

— Julian S. Huxley

Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life [Matthew 6:27]

— Bible

Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.

— William James

The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money.

— Thomas Jefferson

He that never thinks can never be wise.

— Johnson

All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.

— Immanuel Kant

Intelligence must follow faith, never precede it. and never destroy it.

— Thomas Kempis

Thinking is one thing no one has ever been able to tax.

— Charles F. Kettering

In America we can say what we think, and even if we can't think, we can say it anyhow.

— Charles F. Kettering

Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.

— Søren Kierkegaard

Nothing pains some people more than having to think.

— King Jr. Martin Luther

My thoughts are my company; I can bring them together, select them, detain them, dismiss them.

— Walter Savage Landor

When I write down my thoughts, they do not escape me. This action makes me remember my strength which I forget at all times. I educate myself proportionately to my captured thought. I aim only to distinguish the contradiction between my mind and nothingness.

— Comte De Isidore Ducasse Lautreamont

Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man, but they don't bite everybody.

— Stanislaw J. Lec

As you think, so shall you become.

— Bruce Lee

Rational free spirits are the light brigade who go on ahead and reconnoiter the ground which the heavy brigade of the orthodox will eventually occupy.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

When I'm getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds thinking about him and what he is going to say.

— Abraham Lincoln

Where all men think alike, no one thinks very much.

— Walter Lippmann

I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.

— John Locke

Thought takes man out of servitude, into freedom.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Thinking clearly and effectively is the greatest asset of any human being. We are constantly reminded that the one superiority that man has over other animals is the ability to think. It is primarily our ability to think that sets us apart from other animals.

— Harry Lorayne

The average person thinks he isn't.

— Larry Lorenzoni

I refuse the compliment that I think like a man, thought has no sex, one either thinks or one does not.

— Clare Boothe Luce

An arrow may fly through the air and leave no trace; but an ill thought leaves a trail like a serpent.

— Charles Mackay

The birthplace of success for each person is in his Inner-Consciousness. The Inner-Consciousness will use whatever it is given. If constructive thoughts are planted positive outcomes will be the result. Plant the seeds of failure and failure will follow.

— Sidney Madwed

Thinking and Thought: Thoughts are funny little things, They can make paupers or make kings.

— Sidney Madwed

You need not aspire for or get any new state. Get rid of your present thoughts, that is all.

— Ramana Maharshi

If one wants to abide in the thought-free state, a struggle is inevitable. One must fight one's way through before regaining one's original primal state. If one succeeds in the fight and reaches the goal, the enemy, namely the thoughts, will all subside in the Self and disappear entirely.

— Ramana Maharshi

Build this day on a foundation of pleasant thoughts. Never fret at any imperfections that you fear may impede your progress. Remind yourself, as often as necessary, that you are a creature of God and have the power to achieve any dream by lifting up your thoughts. You can fly when you decide that you can. Never consider yourself defeated again. Let the vision in your heart be in your life's blueprint. Smile!

— Og Mandino

If you make people think they're thinking they'll love you: but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.

— Don Marquis

I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.

— Steve Martin

No brain is stronger than its weakest think.

— Thomas L. Masson

It's only a thought, and a thought can be changed.

— Louise May

I have known countless people who were reservoirs of learning, but never had a thought.

— Wilson Mizner

When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books, They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.

— Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

Man cannot produce a single work without the assistance of the slow, assiduous, corrosive worm of thought.

— Eugenio Montale

The Law of Attraction attracts to you everything you need, according to the nature of your thought life. Your environment and financial condition are the perfect reflection of your habitual thinking. Thought rules the world.

— Joseph Edward Murphy

No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched.

— George Jean Nathan

If I have done the public any service, it is due to my patient thought.

— Sir Isaac Newton

When we talk in company we lose our unique tone of voice, and this leads us to make statements which is no way correspond to our real thoughts.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory it too good.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Thoughts are the shadows of our sensations -- always darker, emptier, simpler than these.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

What's going on in the inside shows on the outside.

— Earl Nightingale

You become what you think about.

— Earl Nightingale

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.

— Thomas Paine

When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.

— Thomas Paine

Thinking is heavily endorsed.

— Mal Pancoast

All great discoveries are made by men whose feelings run ahead of their thinking.

— Charles H. Parkhurst

Man's greatness lies in his power of thought.

— Blaise Pascal

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.

— Blaise Pascal

Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought.

— Blaise Pascal

Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature; but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapor, a drop of water is enough to kill him. But even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the advantage the universe has over him. The universe knows nothing of this.

— Blaise Pascal

If everyone is thinking alike then somebody isn't thinking.

— George S. Patton

Modern man likes to pretend that his thinking is wide-awake. But this wide-awake thinking has led us into the mazes of a nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly repeated in the mirrors of reason.

— Octavio Paz

The how thinker gets problems solved effectively because he wastes no time with futile ifs.

— Norman Vincent Peale

The person who sends out positive thoughts activates the world around him positively and draws back to himself positive results.

— Norman Vincent Peale

There is a criterion by which you can judge whether the thoughts you are thinking and the things you are doing are right for you. The criterion is: Have they brought you inner peace? If they have not, there is something wrong with them -- so keep seeking! If what you do has brought you inner peace, stay with what you believe is right.

— Peace Pilgrim

Thinking is the talking of the soul with itself.

— Plato

When thoughts arise, then do all things arise. When thoughts vanish, then do all things vanish.

— Huang Po

That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful.

— Edgar Allan Poe

Think of your own faults the first part of the night when you are awake, and of the faults of others the latter part of the night when you are asleep.

— Chinese Proverb

A hundred wagon loads of thoughts will not pay a single ounce of debt.

— Italian Proverb

Meditation is the life of the soul: Action, the soul of meditation. and honor the reward of action.

— Francis Quarles

The thought pattern characteristic of the right brain lends itself to the formation of original ideas, insights, discoveries. We might describe it as the kind of thought prevalent in early childhood, when everything is new and everything has meaning. If you have ever walked along a beach and suddenly stopped to pick up a piece of driftwood because it looked to you like a leaping impala or a troll, you know the feeling of pleasure that comes from the sudden recognition of a form. Your Design mind (right brain) has perceived connections and had made a pattern of meaning. It takes logical, rational acts and facts of the world you know, the snippets of your experience, the bits and pieces of your language capabilities, and perceives connections, patterns, and relationships in them.

— Gabriele Lusser Rico

Nothing has any power over me other than that which I give it through my conscious thoughts.

— Anthony Robbins

We find it hard to believe that other people's thoughts are as silly as our own, but they probably are.

— James H. Robinson

To reflect is to disturb one's thoughts.

— Jean Rostand

When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy.

— Salman Rushdie

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth more than ruin more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.

— Bertrand Russell

Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do.

— Bertrand Russell

Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, the chief glory of man.

— Bertrand Russell

Thoughts is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit.

— Bertrand Russell

All thought is naught but a footnote to Plato.

— George Santayana

The birth of thought in the depths of the spirit, the shaping and ordering of it into periods, the translation into signs, and above all the transference of it from one spirit to another, the communication that is, if only for an instant, the meeting of two beings, with the unforeseeable consequences that such a meeting always causes, is in fact a miracle; except that the moment one stops to think about it one can't even write a letter.

— Salvatore Satta