quotations about thinking
Not out of right practice comes right thinking, but out of right thinking comes right practice. It matters enormously what you think. If you think falsely, you will act mistakenly; if you think basely, your conduct will suit your thinking.
ANNIE BESANT
Daily Meditations on the Path and Its Qualifications
The habit of thinking gives an inner life, which all that we see animates and embellishes; in this disposition of the soul everything becomes an object of thought; if the young botanist trembles with joy at the sight of a new plant, the moral botanist joys no less to see germinate around him truths with a much superior prize to that of an unknown flower.
BONSTELLEN
attributed, Day's Collacon
Thinking makes the man.
W. A. ALCOTT
attributed, Day's Collacon
Though man a thinking being is defined,
Few use the grand prerogative of mind.
How few think justly of the thinking few!
How many never think, who think they do.
JANE TAYLOR
Essays in Rhyme
Every man who expresses what he honestly thinks is true is changing the Spirit of the Times. Thinkers help other people to think, for they formulate what others are thinking. No person writes or thinks alone--thought is in the air, but its expression is necessary to create a tangible Spirit of the Times.
ELBERT HUBBARD
Pig-Pen Pete
I figure if you think too much about things, life sometimes just passes you by.
DAVID BALDACCI
Split Second
I view everything in life as white or black. I don't see color when it comes to life, lessons, situations, or the world. I think either it's meant to be or not, it's going to happen or it won't, either it's fate or it's not. There is no in between in my thoughts. This is the exact way I look at my life and trying to be perfect within it. It's not easy to explain, but when I fail at something I must sulk on it for days or weeks because it throws off my way of thinking.
CHERI VOIGT
"WRITE TEAM: Black-and-white thinking", My Web Times, May 18, 2017
In martial arts, as in life, you quickly learn not to think too much. You have to do. While you're thinking, you open spaces where an opponent can successfully strike at you. The more you think, the more vulnerable you become.
JOSEPH CARDILLO
Be Like Water
There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.
HANNAH ARENDT
The Life of the Mind
If thou thinkest twice, before thou speakest once, thou wilt speak twice the better for it.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
We are powerfully imprisoned in these Dark Ages simply by the terms in which we have been conditioned to think.
BUCKMINSTER FULLER
Cosmography
All practical men try to bring the world under their hands; all thinkers, under their heads.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Curtsy while you're thinking what to say. It saves time.
LEWIS CARROLL
Alice Through the Looking Glass
If one learns from others but does not think, one is still at a loss. If, on the other hand, one thinks but does not learn from others, one is in peril.
CONFUCIUS
The Analects
Man is distinguished from the brute animals in proportion as thought prevails over sense: but in the healthy processes of the mind, a balance is constantly maintained between the impressions from outward objects and the inward operations of the intellect:--for if there be an overbalance in the contemplative faculty, man thereby becomes the creature of mere meditation, and loses his natural power of action.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
"Notes on Hamlet"
What do such machines really do? They increase the number of things we can do without thinking. Things we do without thinking -- there's the real danger.
FRANK HERBERT
God Emperor of Dune
If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.
HARLAN ELLISON
Sleepless Nights in the Procrustean Bed
The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.
HORACE WALPOLE
The Letters of Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford
Man has been born for two things--thinking and acting; to think is to live.
CICERO
attributed, Day's Collacon
Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don't realize this because almost everybody is suffering from it, so it is considered normal. This incessant mental noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being.
ECKHART TOLLE
The Power of Now