Quotes About Thought

Later, he told his nephew that religion required careful thought, not reflexive acceptance. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.

And then the sly arch-lover that he was, he said the subtlest thing of all: that the lover was nearer the divine than the beloved; for the god was in the one but not in the other - perhaps the tenderest, most mocking thought that ever was thought, and source of all the guile and secret bliss the lover knows.

?udno je to. Kad ?oveka obuzme neka misao, onda je nalazi svuda, ?ak je i miriše u vetru.

Nothing gladdens a writer more than a thought that can become pure feeling and a feeling that can become pure thought.

La barbarie n est le contraire de la culture que dans le cadre de la hierarchie de pensee que celle-ci nous propose.

Glück des Schriftstellers ist der Gedanke, der ganz Gefühl, ist das Gefühl, das ganz Gedanke zu werden vermag.

E' strano. Se un pensiero ti domina, lo trovi espresso dappertutto, ne senti perfino l'odore nel vento, nella vernice, nel profumo della primavera;

Felicità per lo scrittore è il pensiero che può diventare interamente il sentimento, il sentimento che può diventare pensiero. Tali erano il pensiero palpitante e il sentimento rigoroso che appartenevano e obbedivano in quel momento al solitario: cioè, che la natura rabbrividisce di voluttà quando lo spirito s'inchina davanti alla bellezza.

A purely mental life may be destructive if it leads us to substitute thought for life and ideas for actions. The activity proper to man is purely mental because man is not just a disembodied mind. Our destiny is to live out what we think, because unless we live what we know, we do not even know it. It is only by making our knowledge part of ourselves, through action, that we enter into the reality that is signified by our concepts.

Living is not thinking. Thought is formed and guided by objective reality outside us. Living is the constant adjustment of thought to life and life to thought in such a way that we are always growing, always experiencing new things in the old and old things in the new. Thus life is always new.

Too much happiness, too much unhappiness, out of due time, men are thrown off balance. What will they do next? Thought runs wild. No control. They start everything, finish nothing. Here competition begins, here the idea of excellence is born, and robbers appear in the world.

I could recognize that those who thought about God had a good way of considering Him, and that those who believed in Him really believed in someone, and their faith was more than a dream.

Why should anyone be shattered by the thought of hell? It is not compulsory for anyone to go there. Those who do, do so by their own choice, and against the will of God, and they can only get into hell by defying and resisting all the work of Providence and grace. It is their own will that takes them there, not God's.

He arrives at his own being as if it were an objective reality, that is to say he strives to become aware of himself as he would of some "thing" alien to himself. And he proves that the "thing" exists. He convinces himself: "I am therefore some thing." And then he goes on to convince himself that God, the infinite, the transcendent, is also a "thing," an "object," like other finite and limited objects of our thought!

In every area of thought we must rely ultimately on our judgments, tested by reflection, subject to correction by the counterarguments of others, modified by the imagination and by comparison with alternatives.

Not quite like my mother's, but still a real 'trip,'" Bigfoot confided, "though what I really go for here is the respect." "Didn't get much of that from your mom, huh?" Had Doc really said that or only thought it? He waited for Bigfoot to take offense, but the detective only went on. . .

could see that fatty mind grinding and figuring.

Some years ago, in my syndicated column, I challenged anyone to name any economist, of any school of thought, who had actually advocated a "trickle down" theory. No one quoted any economist, politician or person in any other walk of life who had ever advocated such a theory, even though many readers named someone who claimed that someone else had advocated it, without being able to quote anything actually said by that someone else. 2

The truth is that every true admirer of the novels cherishes the happy thought that he alone - reading between the lines - has become the secret friend of their author.

It was painful to remember him, but the thought of forgetting him was even worse.

Love goes away when your mind goes away and then you're someone else.

One need not smoke to inhale. The air in bars holds its load of tars in stale suspension. Also jails. Jails are a prison for the person who abhors smoke. But happily gorgeous thought also hangs around like that: you can walk through a mist of Brodsky and contact- exist.

People react predictably, especially when they don't have time to think.