Quotes About Thinking

Like many Chinese, I was incapable of rational thinking in those days. We were so cowed and contorted by fear and indoctrination that to deviate from the path laid down by Mao would have been inconceivable. Besides, we had been overwhelmed by deceptive rhetoric, disinformation, and hypocrisy, which made it virtually impossible to see through the situation and to form an intelligent judgment.

In the past, a woman could get along without an analytical mind; but not any more. A woman who wanted to be the equal of Westerners and a fine woman wasn't very promising is she had no aptitude for systematic thinking and analysis.

Wordsworth had discerned a 'spirit' which was at one and the same time immanent in and distinct from natural phenomena: 'A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought And rolls through all things.

Today mythical thinking has fallen into disrepute; we often dismiss it as irrational and self-indulgent. But the imagination is also the faculty that has enabled scientists to bring new knowledge to light and to invent technology that has made us immeasurably more effective.

Philo believed that when we caught a glimpse of the Logos in creation and the Torah, we were taken beyond the reach of discursive reason to a rapturous recognition that God was 'higher than a way of thinking, more precious than anything that is merely thought'.

No one … can entirely step out of his time, that despite his keenness of vision his thinking is in many ways bound to be influenced by the mentality of his time

He didn't believe animals could think, not in the way he defined the term, but he wasn't much impressed with human thinking, either. He referred to the human brain as a clown car parked between our ears. Open the doors and the clowns pile out.

Kig-Yar didn't think like humans, though. They'd tried imperial culture once and decided it wasn't for them. Maybe they were right: humans were constantly in denial about their ape-sized social circles, always pretending they could think on a global scale when history proved every time that they really couldn't.

Christendom and the theological world were always ill-advised in thinking it their duty for some reason or other, either of enthusiasm or of theological conception, to pitch their tents in opposition to reason.

When heedful interrelating produces mindful action, this is an example of people acting in order to think. What is different is that the acting is more relationally sensitive and the thinking is more situationally mindful. With fuller attention there is less confirmation bias.

The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth — i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.

Feuerbach, not satisfied with abstract thinking, wants contemplation; but he does not conceive sensuousness as practical, human-sensuous activity. - Theses On Feuerbach (1845)

Thinking is underrated. I don't think thinking is a popular pastime these days due to the fact there's always something else on offer that you could be doing instead. Maybe people also don't like to do it as much as it's now harder due to noise.

I admire the linear and decisive way a certain kind of man thinks, to my curlicue boundless overthinking.

There are men who never err, because they never propose anything rational.

Men of genius are not quick judges of character. Deep thinking and high imagining blunt that trivial instinct by which you and I size people up.

There must be a marsh in the brains of these men or there would not be so many frogs of wrong ideas gathered in their heads.

To say that a man is a reasoning animal is a very different thing than to say that most of man's decisions are based on his rational process. That I don't believe at all.

Man is a reasoning Animal.

...nothing on earth can stop man from feeling himself born for liberty. Never, whatever may happen, can he accept servitude; for he is a thinking creature.

I strongly wish for what I faintly hope; like the daydreams of melancholy men, I think and think in things impossible, yet love to wander in that golden maze.

Thinking man's crumpet? Well, it's more flattering than being a lobotomised man's crumpet, I suppose.

Do you know the primary difference between men and gods? ... Gods don't think they can become men

Though men may be deep, mentally they are slow.