Quotes About Thought

T]he creation out of nothing is no object of philosophy; … for it cuts away the root of all speculation, presents no grappling point to thought, … a baseless air-built doctrine, originated solely … to give warrant to … egoism, which … expresses nothing but the command to make Nature – not an object of thought, of contemplation, but – an object of utilisation.

God as God, … as a being not finite, not human, not materially conditioned, not phenomenal, is only an object of thought. … [H]e is known … only by abstraction and negation … There is no other spirit, no other intelligence which enlightens him, which is active in him. … The 'infinite spirit,' is therefore nothing else than the intelligence disengaged from the limits of individuality and corporeality[.]

Consciousness in the strictest sense is present … in a being whom his species, his essential nature, is an object of thought.

Consciousness in the strictest sense is present only in a being to whom his species, his essential nature, is an object of thought.

I]f thou thinkest the infinite thou perceivest and affirmest the infinitude of the power of thought[.]

In breathing I am an object of the air, the air the subject; but when I make the air an object of thought, of investigation, when I analyse it, I reverse the relation - I make myself the subject, the air an object.

Man, by means of the imagination, involuntarily contemplates his inner nature; he represents it as out of himself. The nature of man, of the species – thus working on him through the irresistible power of the imagination, and contemplated as the law of his thought and action – is God.

La religion est le rêve de l'esprit humain

Adept as he was in the Hegelian dialectic — a system easy of abuse by those who seek to dominate thought by arbitrary flights of fancy and metaphysical verbosity — he was not slow in finding a way out of the dilemma in which socialists found themselves.

Though the man of action, the politician, may sometimes pay no attention to the results of this examination, the man of thought will never cease to inquire into all things accessible to human intelligence. And in the long run thought must determine action.

Science does not give us absolute and final certainty. It only gives us assurance within the limits of our mental abilities and the prevailing state of scientific thought.

thinking is always thinking of a potential action.

According to the Marxist conception, one's social condition determines one's way of thought. His membership of a social class decides what views a writer will express.

It is vain to fight totalitarianism by adopting totalitarian methods. Freedom can only be won by men unconditionally committed to the principles of freedom. The first requisite for a better social order is the return to unrestricted freedom of thought and speech.

If people never did silly things, then nothing intelligent would ever get done.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

A lot of people have opinions, but I don't think they ever ask themselves why their opinions are what they are.

I've thought a lot about it: how you can ricochet from a moment where you are on top of the world to one where you are crawling at rock bottom. I've thought about all the things I could have done differently, and if it would have led to another outcome. But thinking doesn't change anything, does it?

It was the sort of place where you could hear the tumblers of your mind falling into place as you pieced thought together, as you tried to match it to action.

permission, I blurted it out—even though I should have thought twice. "Your daughter is looking for you." Cleo's best friend, who was part of the show

She closed the phone, thinking how he always had enough magic in his pocket to change her mood even if he didn't have enough to change his dreams.

There is no thought, no word, no act, and no area of human life that is not affected by sin.

But before we address this question

A writer had to stand the silences that came with being alone[…]. You could think when you were alone, and writers needed to think.