Quotes About Thinking

Nor does one have the option of saying that differences exist but that one will not judge them. To notice a difference is to have an opinion about it—unless one refuses to think. And that is my ultimate objection to the nonjudgmental frame of mind. We can refuse to voice our opinions, our judgments, but we cannot keep from having them unless we refuse to think about what is before our eyes.

My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.

Augustine [of Hippo] knew the power and the danger of idolatry and celebrity. And he knew the danger of both was first to permit the idolater to offload the duty of thinking onto their idol. And second to seduce the celebrity, in turn, into thinking his fans have nothing insightful to say. That treatment of a fellow human, a fellow christian, would be not the achievement of theology but the avoidance of it. And he went out of his way in his life and in his words to forestall such approaches.

We both (Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett) insist on a lot of time being available almost every day to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. We read and think.

We both insist on a lot of time being available almost every day to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. We read and think. So Warren and I do more reading and thinking and less doing than most people in business.

Crowd folly, the tendency of humans, under some circumstances, to resemble lemmings, explains much foolish thinking of brilliant men and much foolish behavior.

Wishful thinking, that time might heal—it seldom healed anything, only making scars that were often tender to the touch, and ugly.

To begin... To begin... How to start? I'm hungry. I should get coffee. Coffee would help me think. Maybe I should write something first, then reward myself with coffee. Coffee and a muffin. Okay, so I need to establish the themes. Maybe a banana-nut. That's a good muffin.

Thought breeds thought; children familiar with great thoughts take as naturally to thinking for themselves as the well-nourished body takes to growing; and we must bear in mind that growth, physical, intellectual, moral, spiritual, is the sole end of education.

I am, unfortunately, one of those much-berated New England women who have learned to think as well as feel; and to me, at least, marriage means more than a union of hearts and bodies--it must mean minds, too.

Life's short. Anything could happen, and it usually does, so there's no point in sitting around thinking about all the ifs, ands and buts.

In the Lake Debo region (in Mali, on the Niger), pyramids are also found, and these were dubbed "mounds," as might be expected. This is the usual procedure in the attempt to disparage African values. In contrast, there is the reverse procedure consisting of describing a clay tumulus—a real mound—in Mesopotamia, as the most perfect temple that the human mind can imagine. It goes without saying that such reconstructions are generally mere wishful thinking.

husband's memory. Why was she thinking about laying with another man? Thomas's black eyes followed her movement, a

Rise to the challenge, he told himself. You can do it. Because you have to. Inwardly Kesselring sighed. He had always thought people who espoused the wonders of positive thinking were deluding themselves.

It's amazing how quickly the mind switches from figuring out a situation to commenting on it.

All sorts of reflections of this nature passed through my mind—for as I grow older I regret to say that a detestable habit of thinking seems to be getting a hold of me...

The spirit of meditation is the combating of self-willed thinking—it is a combat against the weight of one's feelings.

It is, in fact, far easier to act under conditions of tyranny than it is to think.

Metaphysical fallacies contain the only clues we have to what thinking means to those who engage in it.

To expect truth to come from thinking signifies that we mistake the need to think with the urge to know.

Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality, that is, against the claim on our thinking attention that all events and facts make by virtue of their existence.

I think that one of the things I have always found most attractive about art and music and culture is the experience of how it can change one's thinking. This has always been the big pay-off for me. - Tony Conrad

Beauty is the last thing which the thinking intellect dares to approach, since only it dances as an uncontained splendor around the double constellation of the true and the good and their inseparable relation to one another.

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.