thinking Quotes

“Now think deeply. What have you done with your life over the past year? How do you feel inside?”

“Instinct is no match for reason.”

″ ‘Can it think?’ ‘Not only can it think, but it can reason and compromise,’ said the Creator.”

“The Taliban could take our pens and books, but they could not stop our minds from thinking.”

“You need to think in Martian to grok the word ‘grok.‘”

“It cost nothing to think bigger than you are, BUT cost a fortune to think less of yourself.”

“Small thinking keeps small businesses small”

“Time is all you have. And you may find one day that you have less than you think.”

“But for some people, the invasive can kind of take over, crowding out all the other thoughts until it’s the only one you’re able to have, the thought you’re perpetually either thinking or distracting yourself from.”

“The Christmas presents once opened are Not So Much Fun as they were while we were in the process of examining, lifting, shaking, thinking about, and opening them.”

“I think, therefore I am... confused.”

“Mr. Fox had not spoken for a long time. He had been sitting quite still, his eyes closed, not even hearing what the others were saying. Mrs. Fox knew that he was trying desperately to think of a way out. And now, as she looked at him, she saw him stir himself and get slowly to his feet.”

“It’s nicer to think dear, pretty thoughts and keep them in one’s heart, like treasures. I don’t like to have them laughed at or wondered over.”

“First with the head and then with the heart.”

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

“At twelve I had already known how to think for at least four years. In teaching me independence of thought, they had given me the greatest gift an adult can give to a child besides love, and they had given me that also.”

“A culture of discipline is not a principle of business, it is a principle of greatness.”

″‘Well,’ he thought, ‘I suppose I’m lucky to be alive at all.‘”

“Sometimes people use thought to not participate in life.”

“Your brain, Peekay, has two functions; it is a place for original thought, but also it is a reference library. Use it to tell you where to look, and then you will have for yourself all the brains that have ever been.”

“Mr. Fox looked at the four Small Foxes and he smiled. What fine children I have, he thought. They are starving to death and haven’t had a drink for three days, but they are still undefeated. I must not let them down.”

“I’m going to write it down because maybe if I do I won’t have to think about it. And I won’t get upset.”

“Men think more about returning home than about leaving.”

“And as she looked at him she began to smile, for though she had not said a word, he knew, of course he knew, that she loved him. He could not deny it. And smiling she looked out of the window and said (thinking to herself, Nothing on earth can equal this happiness)—”

“A significant portion of what we call reality was shaped by human effort.”

“Whenever you think you can or think you can’t, either way you are right.”

“We don’t have the luxury of thinking ... Some people make all the decisions for us.”

“You don’t need to have it all before you start, you don’t need to know everything, you don’t need to understand fully how it works and you don’t need to be sure or assured of the future.”

“Our mind is powerful. Think Bigger. Dream bigger. Act bigger – and you’ll live a much bigger version of your life!”

“No brain at all, some of them, only grey fluff that’s blown into their heads by mistake, and they don’t think.”

“We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful.”

“Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think.”

“I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone, I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again, I am to see to it that I do not lose you.”

“Ponder and deliberate before you make a move.”

“There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think.”

“When obedience to God contradicts what I think will give me pleasure, let me ask myself if I love Him.”

“Meditation does not involve trying to change your thinking by thinking some more. It involves watching thought itself.”

“The Dream is the enemy of all art, courageous thinking, and honest writing.”

“Often, in the beginning, you will think that you are wasting time, but you must go on, be determined and persevere in it until death, despite all the difficulties.”

“You need not cry very loud: He is nearer to us than we think.”

“I won’t tell you what to believe, Eragon. It is far better to be taught to think critically and then be allowed to make your own decisions than to have someone else’s notions thrust upon you.”

“Too many problems in this world are caused by men with noble dispositions and clouded minds.”

“On its own, being a decent person is no guarantee that you will act well, which brings us back to the one protection we have against demagogues, tricksters, and the madness of crowds . . . : clear and reasoned thinking.”

“Magic is the art of thinking, not strength or language . . . ”

“I would also contend that if you had to choose between giving a man a noble disposition or teaching him to think clearly, you’d do better to teach him to think clearly. Too many problems in this world are caused by men with noble dispositions and clouded minds.”

“From now on you’re going to have to think. There’s a reason why we’re born with brains in our heads, not rocks.”

“Wise? No, I’ve just learned how to think.”

“If you work hard enough, assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires.”

“I began to experience the most powerful advantage of money: the ability to think of things besides money.”

“The greater part of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly influenced by his instincts, and forced into definite channels.”

“I did everything I could to avoid being alone or having too much time to think.”

“This is how I think of us, when I remember our nights at Troy: Achilles and I beside each other, Phoinix smiling and Automedon stuttering through the punch lines of jokes, and Briseis with her secret eyes and quick, spilling laughter.”

“I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul.”

“I stood in that room for a long time, watching the sunlight and listening to the sounds on the street outside. I stood there, tasting the room and the sunlight and the sounds, and thinking of the long hospital ward. . . Somehow everything had changed. I had spent five days in a hospital and the world around seemed sharpened now and pulsing with life.”

“I think all it really takes for different people to get along is a common rooting interest and a few beers.”

“Feminist thinking teaches us all, especially, how to love justice and freedom in ways that foster and affirm life.”

″ Figure out where you want to go; then work backwards from there.”

“It’s just that it’s fearsome for a man to have a woman start thinking right in front of him. It always leads to trouble.”

“Things are not quite as bad as you think.”

“My mother used to hope that I would rise up from my humble roots. Become someone sucessful, or even famous. I’m famous all right, but I don’t think it’s what she had in mind.”

“I think, if you touch me, your hand might fall off or something. Worse things have happened to people who have touched me.”

“As a person thinks, feels, and believes, so is the condition of his or her mind, body, and circumstances.”

“Is there a lot of stuff you don’t understand? she said & I said pretty much the whole thing & she nodded & said that’s what she thought, but it was nice to hear it anyways and we sat there on the porch swing, listening to the wind & growing up together.”

“She always camouflaged herself as a crowd. I’ve never been lonely, she said, but sometimes it’s hard to think above the noise.”

“I don’t think about losing because it isn’t losing. We’ve totally won.” What’s more, he was already laying down his public response to losing the election: It was stolen!”

“Little Lotte thought of everything and nothing.”

“I have to think that I think it’s always been a horse race between this administration’s temporary political acumen and their completely, utterly, totally bankrupt policies. And they’re coming home to roost. It was always a question of time. These guys aren’t conservative. These guys are radicals.”

“Think a little,” I replied, “you are quite as capable as I am of finding out the way, even if you do not know the real reason of your failure.”

“I was just getting ready to stick my tongue out at them; but then I thought about what Miss Franny said, about war being hell, and I thought about what Gloria Dump said, about not judging them too hard. And so I just waved instead.”

“Seasons is a wise metaphor for the movement of life, I think. It suggests that life is neither a battlefield nor a game of chance but something infinitely richer, more promising, more real.”

“If you can control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his action. When you determine what a man shall think you do not have to concern yourself about what he will do. If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status, for he will seek it himself. If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He will go without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one.”

“But time to think? If you’re not driving a hundred miles an hour, at a clip where you can’t think of anything else but the danger, then you’re playing some game or sitting in some room where you can’t argue with the four wall televisor. Why? The televisor is ‘real.’ It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be, right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn’t time to protest, ‘What nonsense!‘”

Free thinkers at seventeen!

“My mom did what school didn’t. She taught me how to think.”

“A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting. ”

“Think about it: what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow men. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.”

“What you think you are is a belief to be undone.”

″‘I’ll think you’ll find,’ said Dr. Breed, ‘that everybody does about the same amount of thinking. Scientists simply think about things in one way, and other people think about things in others.‘”

“What you see reflects your thinking, and your thinking but reflects the choice of what you want to see.”

“Two important lessons here. This first is that truly successful decision making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking...The second lesson is that in good decision making, frugality matters.”

“Everything is mental,”

“You fell in love with a storm. Did you really think you would get out unscathed?”

“Do not complain. Make every effort to change things you do not like. If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution.”

“It isn’t what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.”

“O teach me how I should forget to think.”

“You’re bound to get idears if you go thinkin’ about stuff.”

“He read a lot. He used a lot of big words. I think maybe part of what got him into trouble was that he did too much thinking. Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often. A couple of times I tried to tell him it was a mistake to get too deep into that kind of stuff, but Alex got stuck on things. He always had to know the absolute right answer before he could go on to the next thing.”

“And once you are in motion, do not allow your thoughts to distract you. Think without thinking, so that you act as if out of instinct and not reason.”

“A guy sets alone out here at night, maybe readin’ books or thinkin’ or stuff like that.”

“I gotta think about that. We was always gonna do it by ourselves.”

Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth.

Men are never so serious, thoughtful, and intent, as when they are at stool.

“‘Now I am depressed myself,’ I said. ‘That’s why I never think about these things. I never think and yet when I begin to talk I say the things I have found out in my mind without thinking.‘”

“O Judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason!”

“Thank God for books and music and things I can think about.”

“While dressing or shaving or getting breakfast, say aloud a few such remarks as the following: ‘I believe this is going to be a wonderful day. I believe I can successfully handle all problems that will arise today. I feel good physically, mentally, emotionally. It is wonderful to be alive. I am grateful for all that I have had, for all that I now have, and for all that I shall have. Things aren’t going to fall apart. God is here and He is with me and He will see me through. I thank God for every good thing.‘”

“Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade. Your mind will seek to develop the picture. . . . Do not build up obstacles in your imagination.”

“Any fact facing us is not as important as our attitude toward it, for that determines our success or failure. The way you think about a fact may defeat you before you ever do anything about it. You are overcome by the fact because you think you are.”

“And that’s when I know it’s over. As soon as you start thinking about the beginning, it’s the end.”

“Satan’s greatest success is in making people think they have plenty of time before they die to consider their eternal welfare.”

“All I think of ever is that I love you.”

“So take the time to think. Discover your real reason for being here and then have the courage to act on it.”

“And that was how, after twelve years of never thinking for as much as five minutes about myself, I became able finally to muster the nerve, and the strength, to start facing the facts, to think for myself.”

“I just... I caught myself thinking about it over and over. And then I realized that I was simply remembering it as something that was wrong with me. That was the story I was telling myself - that I was somehow inferior. Isn’t that interesting? The past is just a story we tell ourselves.”

“I need to spend some time in my head with this new Simon.”

“His first theory was that if human beings didn’t keep exercising their lips, their mouths probably shriveled up. After a few months of observation he had come up with a second theory, which was this--“If human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, their brains start working.”

“Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.”

“Actually, I am a failed anorexic. I have anorexic thinking, but I can’t seem to muster the behavior”

“You want to be adding value as you think about projects and people, not simply reminding yourself they exist.”

“You’ve got to think about the big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction. —Alvin Toffler”

“Everything you’ve told yourself you ought to do, your mind thinks you should do right now.”

“Use your mind to think about things, rather than think of them.”

“I think of Sarah. The rest is easy.”

“You can fool everyone else, but you can’t fool your own mind.”

“Nostalgia is not what it used to be.”

“Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought. —Henri Bergson”

“This is a poem about Percy This is a poem about more than Percy. Think about it.”

“I have tried to gild war, and to solace myself for the loss of dear and gallant friends, with the thought that a soldier’s death for a cause that he believes in will count for much, whatever may be beyond this world.”

“To admit this would force philosophers to confront the possibility that the physical sciences offer a grossly inadequate view of reality. And since philosophers very much wish to think of themselves as scientists, this would offer them an unattractive choice between changing their allegiances or accepting their irrelevance.”

“But I’d hate to think an angel couldn’t sing a little better than that.”

“Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Suffering follows an evil thought as the wheels of a cart follow the oxen that draws it.”

“I done me best when I was let. Thinking always if I go all goes. A hundred cares, a tithe of troubles and is there one who understands me? One in a thousand of years of the nights? All me life I have been lived among them but now they are becoming lothed to me.”

“Group drinkards maaks grope thinkards.”

“You mustn’t think of the Universe as a wilderness. It hasn’t been that for billions of years,” he said. “Think of it more as... ..cultivated.”

“Ants occupy the same landscape that we do. They have plenty to do, things to occupy themselves. On some level they’re very well aware of their environment. But we don’t try to communicate with them. So I don’t think they have the foggiest notion that we exist.”

“Ants occupy the same landscape that we do. They have plenty to do, things to occupy themselves. On some level they’re very well aware of their environment. But we don’t try to communicate with them. So I don’t think they have the foggiest notion that we exist.”

“The mind feasts on what it focuses on. What consumes my thinking will be the making or the breaking of my identity.”

“Failure is an inside job. So is success. If you want to achieve, you have to win the war in your thinking first.”

“I’ve been thinking lately. About you and me. About what’s going to happen to us, in the end. We’re going to kill each other, aren’t we? Perhaps you’ll kill me. Perhaps I’ll kill you. Perhaps sooner. Perhaps later.”

“Jeez, I have to go, I have to go and stand up there, and nobody laughs, and you think , you think I .... I don’t mean to take it out on you. You’re suh - suffering enough, being married to a loser.”

″ Men of his type so dread all deliberation that they glory in the practice of the instantaneous decision. They think they are saving themselves from irresolution; in reality they are sparing themselves the contemplation of all the consequences of their acts.”

“We, too, need that kind of support to give us strength in our spiritual core. That means we must tightly surround ourselves with truth and not allow for anything other than the truth to enter into our thinking or situation. ”

“There are a whole lot of things in this world of ours you haven’t started wondering about yet.”

“Now she had so much to think about as she chewed the grass, looking so pretty in a colored straw hat with streamers!”

“Brian he once had an English teacher, a guy named Perpich, who was always talking about being positive, thinking positive, staying on top of things.”

“At last Maddie sat up in bed and pressed her forehead tight in her hands and really thought. This was the hardest thinking she had ever done. After a long, long time she reached an important conclusion. She would never stand by and say nothing again.”

“There are so many THINKS that a thinker can think!”

“Think! Think a ship. Think up a long trip. ”

“Think of black water. Think up a white sky. Think up a boat. Think of BLOOGS blowing by.”

“He thought he had the most splendid time in the Gardens, and to think you have it is almost quite as good as really to have it.”

“Sometimes I stare boredly into space, thinking utterly of nothing. This makes Mrs. Wilberton very irritated. I get on her nerves. I know this because she is always telling me I do. To be honest, Mrs. Wilberton is not my favorite person on the planet of Earth. Unfortunately, I am from Earth and she is my teacher.”

“Think! Think! Think! That boy will think himself into an early grave...”

“THINK! You can think any THINK that you wish... Think a race on a horse on a ball with a fish!”

“I had so many troubles, I just couldn’t think!”

“Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the THINKS you can think up if only you try!”

“You can think up some birds. That’s what you can do. You can think about yellow or think about blue.”

“Think! Think and wonder. Wonder and think. How much water can fifty-five elephants drink?”

“You can think about red. You can think about pink. You can think up a horse. Oh, the THINKS you can think!”

“And why is it so many things go to the Right? You can think about THAT until Saturday night.”

“Sometimes I stare boredly into space, thinking utterly of nothing. This makes Mrs. Wilberton very irritated. I get on her nerves. I know this because she is always telling me I do. To be honest, Mrs. Wilberton is not my favorite person on the planet of Earth. Unfortunately, I am from Earth and she is my teacher.”

“Upon an island hard to reach, the East Beast sits upon his beach. Upon the west beach sits the West Beast. Each beach beast thinks he’s the best beast. Which beast is the best?... Well, I thought at first that the East was best and the West was worst. The I looked again from the west to the east and I like the beast on the east beach beast.”

“She turns her thinker-upper on. She lets it softly purr. It thinks up friendly little things with smiles and fuzzy fur.”

″ ‘I think I’m afraid of everything,’ he said.”

“Later, after Clarice dumps a bowl of spaghetti on her brother’s head, her mother advises her to think before she acts, and this young queen of the quick comeback responds, “And she’s right. If I’d thought about it I would have put tapioca down his shorts.”

“Everybody knows the story of the Three Little Pigs. Or at least they think they do. But I’ll let you in on a little secret. Nobody knows the real story, because nobody has ever heard My side of the story”

″‘I can think a little bit, too,’ said Kat. ‘Can’t I go?’ ‘No,’ said Vrouw Vedder. ‘Girls shouldn’t think much. It isn’t good for them. Leave thinking to the men.‘”

“The baby owls thought (all owls think a lot)- ‘I think she’s gone hunting,’ said Sarah. ‘To get us our food!’ said Percy. ‘I want my mummy! said Bill”

“They sat and they thought (all owls think a lot)- ‘I think we should all sit on my branch,’ said Sarah. And they did, all three together.”

“One night Elmer couldn’t sleep for thinking, and the think that he was thinking was that he was tired of being different.”

Henry always felt out of step with the world around him. When everyone looked up, he looked down. If he thought it was going to be a sunny day, it usually rained.

″‘If people fainted because of too much thinking I’d scarcely ever be conscious,’ Tabitha began at once. ‘I think and think all the time, and I’ve never fainted-not once.‘”

“I have anxiety. I have no other type of thinking available.”

“Miro pondered what she was thinking. Did she suspect that she would die before this incident was over? Has she seen through Artkin’s lies, even though he lied to skillfully?”

“Psychologists have been intensely interested for several decades in the two modes of thinking evoked by the picture of the angry woman and by the multiplication problem, and have offered many labels for them.”

“Thursday February 12th. Lincoln’s birthday. I found my mother dyeing her hair in the bathroom tonight. This has come as complete shock to me. For thirteen and three-quarter years I have thought I had a mother with red hair, now I found out that it is really light brown. My mother asked me no to tell my father. What a state their marriage must be in!”

“I’ve gotta think before I act,”

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”

“I like thinking big. I always have. To me it’s very simple: if you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big. Most people think small, because most people are afraid of success, afraid of making decisions, afraid of winning. And that gives people like me a great advantage.”

“And yet isn’t it strange, I though that day. Mamma never comes with me. Doesn’t she ever think it might be dangerous? Hasn’t she seen how wild and isolated is out there? No, that was the point. She’d never seen it. All of sudden two thoughts were colliding in my head.”

“In the heavenly kingdom, maybe all the dead people turn into angels with wings... Some people don’t think that God exists. They think that it’s just black when you die, and that’s it. Lots of people think black seems pretty boring. They might hope that it becomes blue instead.”

“For a moment they sat thinking about it, and about what would have happened if they had travelled to Germany.”

“I think you must be the best person in the world...you are always doing good, aren’t you? -- and thinking about other people. Dearest says that is the best kind of goodness; not to think about yourself, but to think about other people. That is just the way you are, isn’t it?”

Along the way to Akeyo’s village, Handa contemplates which fruit Akeyo will like the best. However, each time Handa thinks about a certain fruit an animal pops along and takes that particular fruit.

You must never think of the whole street at once, understand? You must only concentrate on the next step, the next breath, the next stroke of the broom, and the next, and the next. Nothing else. That way you enjoy your work, which is important, because then you make a good job of it. And that’s how it ought to be.

“And though you think the world is at your feet, it can rise up and tread on you.”

“Philip says, ‘I think.’ I say, ‘I am thinking.’ Philip says, ‘What is five plus six?’ ‘It is eleven,’ I say. ‘And the lesson is over.”

“Thinking about history makes me wonder how I’ll fit into it one day, I guess. And you too. I kinda wish people still wrote like that. History, huh? Bet we could make some.”

″‘If you were mine-’ Mark had been saying this to himself since the first night he had stopped to see Ben. He often lay in bed thinking of it before going to sleep.”

After the painter kills himself, leaving a note that does little to explain why he does not want to live any longer, Claudio can naturally think of nothing else except the infernal “Why?”

“The man lay awake for a while, thinking about the days ahead and of the animals, for the sheer misery in the young dog’s eyes haunted him.”

“He’s starting to get on my nerves, the wolf thinks to himself. For the last two hours the boy has been standing. in front of the wire fencing, as still as a frozen tree, watching the wolf walking.”

“He continued to think, not the lazy meandering thoughts of one about to fall asleep, but exact and definite thoughts.”

″‘Oh, Teddy Robinson,’ said Deborah, ‘don’t think so loud- I can’t hear myself chalking.‘”

“She was trying not to be frightened in her mind, and she found that that sort of waiting and thinking really keep a person quite busy.”

“But Gary was already thinking about that very question. In fact, right at that moment, he asked the TV viewers what name they would choose.”

“She never did or said anything without first thinking how ‘Her Grace’ would have said or done it. As the duchess’s sayings and doings had been rather a bore, Aunt Rebecca’s were too.”

“A longing caressed him, and it was so sharp that he wanted to cry to get it out of his breast. He lay down in the green grass near the round tub at the brush line. He covered his eyes with his crossed arms and lay there a long time, and he was full of a nameless sorrow.”

“Then she went over to her own little corner of the garden for a ‘think’, for she still could not make up her mind which of all those nice things to do.”

“Maybe, I am thinking, there is something hidden like this, in all of us. A small gift from the universe waiting to be discovered.”

“Intelligence is traditionally viewed as the ability to think and learn. Yet in a turbulent world, there’s another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn.”

“Riding the train gives him too much time to think, he has decided. Too much thinking can ruin you.”

“Most of us take pride in our knowledge and expertise, and in staying true to our beliefs and opinions. That makes sense in a stable world, where we get rewarded for having conviction in our ideas. The problem is that we live in a rapidly changing world, where we need to spend as much time rethinking as we do thinking.”

“Baseball is a soap opera that lends itself to probabilistic thinking.

“Man is a thinking reed but his great works are done when he is not calculating and thinking. ‘Childlikeness’ has to be restored...”

“I couldn’t stop thinking how easy it would be to fall.”

“Don’t be an ‘if’ thinker, be a ‘how’ thinker,”