Quotes About Thought

That some repent no one can doubt; but I am inclined to believe that most men and women take their lots as they find them, marrying as the birds do by force of nature, and going on with their mates with a general, though not perhaps an undisturbed satisfaction, feeling inwardly assured that Providence, if it have not done the very best for them, has done for them as well as they could do for themselves with all the thought in the world.

So also to Sir Robert Peel was Catholic Emancipation horrible, so was Reform of Parliament, so was the Corn Law Repeal. They were horrible to him, horrible to be thought of, horrible to be expressed. But the people required these measures, and therefore he carried them, arguing on their behalf with all the astuteness of a practised statesman.

After some loose fashion we turn over things in our mind and ultimately reach some decision, guided probably by our feelings at the last moment rather than by any process of ratiocination;-and then we think that we have thought.

Miss Trefoil must have thought that kissing and proposing were the same thing. Other young ladies have, perhaps, before now made such a mistake. But this young lady had had much experience, and should have known better.

All those who have vantage points in their spirit... ; all those who are masters of their language; all those for whom words have a meaning; all those for whom there exist sublimities in the soul and currents of thought; all those who are the spirit of the times, and have named these currents of thought -- and I am thinking of their precise works, of that automatic grinding that delivers their spirit to the winds -- are pigs.

My father made no such division between faith and reason. He understood that the act of faith does not mean the end of thought.

A man of politics writes about philosophy: it could be that his true philosophy should be looked for rather in his writings on politics. In every personality there is one dominant and predominant activity: it is here that his thought must be looked for, in a form that is more often than not implicit and at times even in contradiction with what is professly expressed.

Strep. Tell me, O Socrates, I beseech you, by Jupiter, who are these that have uttered this grand song? Are they some heroines? Soc. By no means; but heavenly Clouds, great divinities to idle men; who supply us with thought and argument, and intelligence and humbug, and circumlocution, and ability to hoax, and comprehension

Il primo motore è la cosa più perfetta che c'è, è pensiero che pensa a se stesso; dunque esso muove come ciò che è amato, cioè secondo il fine, mentre tutte le altre cose muovono essendo mosse, cioè secondo la causa efficiente. Il mondo lo ama per la sua perfezione e non per la sua bontà, e lui stesso è immobile perchè, essendo perfetto, non ha nulla da attuare.

For the activity of the mind is life

the actuality of thought is life

Every skill and every inquiry, and similarly every action and rational choice, is thought to aim at some good; and so the good had been aptly described as that at which everything aims.

For the beginning is thought to be more than half of the whole, and many of the questions we ask are cleared up by it.

And if a man believes nothing, but believes it equally so and not so, how would his state be different from a vegetable's?

On imagination- "that in virtue of which an image occurs in us" In other words... Imagination is a faculty of the soul

Now that they were no longer half-numbed with starvation, they had time both for leisure and for the first rudiments of thought.

wonder if he can feel pain? Bowman thought briefly. Probably not, he told himself; there are no sense organs in the human cortex, after all. The human brain can be operated on without anesthetics. He

I'd hate to do arithmetic, George thought to himself, in a system based on fourteen.

The universe was vast, but that fact terrified him less than its mystery. George was not a person who thought deeply on such matters, yet sometimes it seemed to him that men were like children amusing themselves in some secluded playground, protected from the fierce realities of the outer world.

when a man sells his independence of thought for money or status, without realizing it he also sells his capacity for independence of thought; and, like the worn-out columnists and commentators, he must play the same old record over and over, because he has no capacity for taking a fresh point of view.

They did not speak, for the words that were wanted did not exist.

You know, Watson, I don't mind confessing to you that I have always had an idea that I would have made a highly efficient criminal.

I never guess. It is a shocking habit - destructive to the logical faculty.

A fine thought in fine language is a most precious jewel, and should not be hid away, but be exposed for use and ornament.