quotations about thought
From thinking proceeds speaking; thence to acting is often but a single step. But how irrevocable and tremendous!
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to John Jay, August 1, 1786
The wise man hath his thoughts in his head; the fool, on his tongue.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
The world is your kaleidoscope, and the varying combinations of colours, which at every succeeding moment it presents to you are the exquisitely adjusted pictures of your ever-moving thoughts.
JAMES ALLEN
As a Man Thinketh
Clearness is the ornament of deep thought.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES
Reflections and Maxims
Upon the cunning loom of thought
We weave our fancies, so and so.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
Cloth of Gold
People can live very simple lives, can't they? Tucked away, without thinking. I think the world is what you enter when you think--when you become educated, when you question--because you can be in the big world and be utterly provincial.
V. S. NAIPAUL
The Paris Review, fall 1998
A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and words; they are afraid of the workings of the human mind.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
radio broadcast, "The Defence of Freedom and Peace (The Lights are Going Out)", October 16, 1938
Every wheatfield of human thought after a while becomes filled with cockle; then the husbandmen destroy the grain with the cockle and plant anew.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Call one thought, and another will follow.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
For good thoughts (though God accept them) yet, towards men, are little better than good dreams, except they be put in act; and that cannot be, without power and place, as the vantage, and commanding ground.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Great Place", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
Though old the thought and oft expressed,
'Tis his at last who says it best.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
For an Autograph
A word devoid of thought is a dead thing, and a thought unembodied in words remains a shadow.
LEV S. VYGOTSKY
Thought and Language
My thoughts are my company; I can bring them together, select them, detain them, dismiss them.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Imaginary Conversations
An author who sets his reader on sounding the depths of his own thoughts serves him best.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Only in thought is man a God; in action and desire we are the slaves of circumstance.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
letter to Lucy Donnely, November 25, 1902
Thought breeds thought; children familiar with great thoughts take as naturally to thinking for themselves as the well-nourished body takes to growing; and we must bear in mind that growth, physical, intellectual, moral, spiritual, is the sole end of education.
CHARLOTTE M. MASON
The Original Home Schooling Series
Two heads are better than one.
JOHN HEYWOOD
Proverbs
O for a life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts!
JOHN KEATS
letter to Benjamin Bailey, November 22, 1817
Good thoughts are apt to vanish away if they be not speedily embodied in good actions.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
Cut off, or cut free, from speech, thought assumes its baroque writerly structures. Speech in a language of which he knows only a few words involves the conscious, patient, awkward, hilarious, and typically unsuccessful translation of thought. This process illuminates the gulf between thought and speech, which is not quite identical to the gulf between inside and outside.
MICHAEL W. CLUNE
"Thought Against Life: Cyrus Console's 'Romanian Notebook'", L.A. Review of Books, May 21, 2017