quotations about thought
With curious art the brain, too finely wrought,
Preys on herself, and is destroyed by thought.
CHARLES CHURCHILL
Epistle to William Hogarth
Learning without thought is labor lost; and thought without learning is perilous.
CONFUCIUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
His high-erected thoughts look'd down upon
The smiling valley of his fruitful heart.
DANIEL WEBSTER
A Monumental Column
Each flying thought, a flying thought pursues.
C. B. LANGSTON
"Thought"
A word devoid of thought is a dead thing, and a thought unembodied in words remains a shadow.
LEV S. VYGOTSKY
Thought and Language
Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, and mankind the vessel.
JULIUS CHARLES HARE
Guesses at Truth
The measure of greatness in a scientific idea is the extent to which it stimulates thought and opens up new lines of research.
PAUL ADRIAN MAURICE DIRAC
attributed, Cosmology of Lemaître
If what we think now is different from what we thought then, we can take it for granted that what we think in a year will be different again.
DORIS LESSING
Shikasta
A penny for your thought.
JOHN LYLY
Euphues
Nothing is so fragile as thought in its infancy; an interruption breaks it: nothing is so powerful, even to overturning empires, when it reaches its maturity.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Beware of producing crude thoughts; study till thy words are matured.
PTAH HOTEP
attributed, Day's Collacon
Thought is challenged only by thought.
KHALED AL-FAISAL
Arab News, May 15, 2017
Never know whose thoughts you're chewing.
JAMES JOYCE
Ulysses
It is doubtful whether our present system of popular education does not retard independent or self thinking as much as it promotes it. All genuine education is self-education. It will incite the individual to think for himself, by rethinking what the race's great thinkers have already thought for him, thus enabling him to go ahead under his own mental steam.
JOSEPH ALEXANDER LEIGHTON
The Field of Philosophy
Our thoughts are often worse than we are, just as they are often better than we are.
GEORGE ELIOT
Mr. Gilfil's Love Story
Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose,
Flushing his brow, and in his pained heart
Made purple riot.
JOHN KEATS
"The Eve of Saint Agnes"
Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought.
GRAHAM GREENE
The Spectator, April 18, 1981
As but a swift glance is enough to catch the glory of a great landscape, or only a little lingering is necessary to observe many peculiar beauties in it, so but a brief turn of the mind to sublime thoughts will give us their light and power.
JAMES VILA BLAKE
Essays
A new thought belongs to the world, and is no man's patent.
HERBERT TUTTLE
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