Thinking Person Quotes

Feminism was good for me, as were any number of causes, but as I developed as a thinking person, the truisms and dogmas of every ideology became as worn as that book's cover. ~ Siri Hustvedt

The thinking (person) must oppose all cruel customs, no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another. ~ Albert Schweitzer

What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism. ~ Albert Einstein

We believe we can train any intelligent, quick thinking person to be a trader. We feel traders are made, not born. ~ Jeff Yass

The gravest error a thinking person can make is to believe that one particular version of history is absolute fact. History is recorded by a series of observers, none of whom is impartial. The facts are distorted by sheer passage of time and thousands of years of humanity's dark ages, deliberate misrepresentations by religious sects, and the inevitable corruption that comes from an accumulation of careless mistakes. The wise person, then, views history as a set of lessons to be learned, choices and ramifications to be considered and discussed, and mistakes that should never again be made. ~ Frank Herbert

The greatest happiness for the thinking person is to have explored the explorable and to venerate in equanimity that which cannot be explored. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Every thinking person fears nuclear war, and every technological state plans for it.
Everyone knows it is madness, and every nation has an excuse ~ Carl Sagan

For any thinking person, it (perpetual happiness) is untenable. If you're a thinking person, your upbeat sometimes, said sometimes. ~ Ron Suskind

In the letter he left for the coroner he had explained his reasoning (for suicide): that life is a gift bestowed without anyone asking for it; that the thinking person has a philosophical duty to examine both the nature of life and the conditions it comes with; and that if this person decides to renounce the gift no one asks for, it is the moral and human duty to act on the consequences of that decision ... Alex showed me a clipping from the Cambridge Evening News. 'Tragic Death of "Promising" Young Man.' ... The verdict of the coroner's inquest had been that Adrian Flinn (22) had killed himself 'while the balance of his mind was disturbed.' ... The law, and society, and religion all said it was impossible to be sane, healthy, and kill yourself. Perhaps those authorities feared that the suicide's reasoning might impugn the nature and value of life as organised by the state which paid the coroner? ~ Julian Barnes

Vladimir Nabokov and George Orwell had quite different gifts, and their self-images were quite different. But, I shall argue, their accomplishment was pretty much the same. Both of them warn the liberal ironist intellectual against temptations to be cruel. Both of them dramatise the tension between private irony and liberal hope.

In the following passage, Nabokov helped blur the distinctions which I want to draw:

...'Lolita' has no moral in tow. For me a work of fiction exists only in so far as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm. There are not many such books. All the rest is either topical trash or what some call the Literature of Ideas, which very often is topical trash coming in huge blocks of plaster that are carefully transmitted from age to age until somebody comes along with a hammer and takes a good crack at Balzac, at Gorki, at Mann.

Orwell blurred the same distinctions when, in one of his rare descents into rant, "The Frontiers of Art and Propaganda," he wrote exactly the sort of thing Nabokov loathed:

You cannot take a purely aesthetic interest in a disease you are dying from; you cannot feel dispassionately about a man who is about to cut your throat. In a world in which Fascism and Socialism were fighting one another, any thinking person had to take side ~ Richard M. Rorty

Meanwhile the thinking person, by intellect usually left-wing but by
temperament often right-wing, hovers at the gate of the Socialist fold. ~ George Orwell

The importance of this will be appreciated by any thinking person who realizes what creatures of moods, feelings and emotion the majority of people are, and how little mastery of themselves they manifest. If you will stop and consider a moment, you will realize how much these swings of Rhythm have affected you in your life - how a period of Enthusiasm has been invariably followed by an opposite feeling and mood of Depression. Likewise, your moods and periods of Courage have been succeeded by equal moods of Fear. And so it has ever been with the majority of persons - tides of feeling have ever risen and fallen with them, but they have never suspected the cause or reason of the mental phenomena. An understanding of the workings of this Principle will give one the key to the Mastery of these rhythmic swings of feeling, and will enable him to know himself better and to avoid being carried away by these inflows and outflows. The Will is superior to the conscious manifestation of this Principle, although the Principle itself can never be destroyed. We may escape its effects, but the Principle operates, nevertheless. The pendulum ever swings, although we may escape being carried along with it. ~ Three Initiates

We respect your learning, Dr Einstein; but there is one thing you do not seem to have learned: that God is a spirit and cannot be found through the telescope or microscope, no more than human thought or emotion can be found by analyzing the brain. As everyone knows, religion is based on Faith, not knowledge. Every thinking person, perhaps, is assailed at times with religious doubt. My own faith has wavered many a time. But I never told anyone of my spiritual aberrations for two reasons: (1) I feared that I might, by mere suggestion, disturb and damage the life and hopes of some fellow being; (2) because I agree with the writer who said, 'There is a mean streak in anyone who will destroy another's faith.' . . . I hope, Dr Einstein, that you were misquoted and that you will yet say something more pleasing to the vast number of the American people who delight to do you honor. ~ Richard Dawkins

And I'll tell you another thing, you won't find any candidate that supports prayer in school and gay marriage. For that reason alone, people should vote for an independent-thinking person. ~ Kinky Friedman

I think that if you're a thinking person you should always be trying to learn something new. ~ Matt Taibbi

Philosophic concepts are a form of sentiment. Conflicts between lofty ideas and vouchsafed values are endemic for any thinking person. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

All existence seemed to be based on duality, on contrast. Either one was a man or one was a woman, either a wanderer or sedentary burgher, either a thinking person or a feeling person-no one could breathe in at the same time as he breathed out, be a man as well as a woman, experience freedom as well as order, combine instinct and mind. One always had to pay for one with the loss of the other, and one thing was always just as important and desirable as the other. ~ Hermann Hesse

When I play, I'm so in the moment that I can't really remember what happened afterwards. It's a rare experience for a thinking person like me. ~ Lykke Li

Life teaches much, but to all thinking persons it brings ever closer the will of God - not because their faculties decline, but on the contrary, because they increase. ~ Madame De Stael

I realized that as a thinking person his advantage lay precisely in his lack of formal education. Nobody told him what to think, and thus he was free to think clearly. ~ Peter Hessler

It's like a candy store for an illustrator, I connected with Harry pretty quickly and loved the way J.K. described everything; she's such a visually thinking person. You can't pass that up. ~ Mary Grandpre

Erudite and entertaining, Max Anderson is the perfect tour guide to the world of art. The Quality Instinct is both educational and enlightening from start to finish, the thinking person's guide to museums. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to truly understand what makes a masterpiece. ~ Daniel Silva

If we could look through the skull into the brain of a consciously thinking person, and if the place of optimal excitability were luminous, then we should see playing over the cerebral surface, a bright spot with fantastic, waving borders constantly fluctuating in size and form, surrounded by a darkness more or less deep, covering the rest of the hemisphere. ~ Ivan Pavlov

Practically, it is most helpful when one wants to find out the type to ask, what is the greatest cross for the person? Where is his greatest suffering? Where does he feel that he always knocks his head against the obstacle and suffers hell? That generally points to the inferior function. Many people, moreover, develop two superior functions so well that it is very difficult to say whether the person is a thinking intuitive type or an intuitive type with good thinking, for the two seem equally good. Sometimes sensation and feeling are so well developed in an individual that you would have difficulty in ascertaining which is the first. But does the intuitive thinking person suffer more from knocking his head on sensation facts or from feeling problems? Here you can decide which is the first, and which the well-developed second, function. ~ Marie-Louise Von Franz

The lesson that any thinking person draws from the Stewart saga is that when the government asks questions, run for your lawyer and don't say a word. Had Stewart kept her mouth shut, she'd be OK. ~ Allan Sloan

We can't write a serious novel in the 21st century without acknowledging the inescapable self-awareness we're stuck with. The idea we're surrounded by falsehoods and lies. It's hard for the thinking person to believe in narratives. And yet we want some place to invest our belief. ~ Michael Helm

To visit a modern Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) is to enter a world that for all its technological sophistication is still designed on seventeenth-century Cartesian principles: Animals are treated as machines - "production units" - incapable of feeling pain. Since no thinking person can possibly believe this anymore, industrial animal agriculture depends on a suspension of disbelief on the part of the people who operate it and a willingness to avert one's eyes on the part of everyone else. ~ Michael Pollan

It is not possible for any thinking person to live in such a society as our own without wanting to change it. ~ George Orwell

When you think of it, really there are four fundamental questions of life. You've asked them, I've asked them, every thinking person asks them. They boil down to this; origin, meaning, morality and destiny. 'How did I come into being? What brings life meaning? How do I know right from wrong? Where am I headed after I die?' ~ Ravi Zacharias

Whenever I hear people say clean food is expensive, I tell them it's actually the cheapest food you can buy. That always gets their attention. Then I explain that with our food all the costs are figured into the price. Society is not bearing the cost of water pollution, of antibiotic resistance, of food-borne illness, of crop subsidies, of subsidized oil and water
of all the hidden costs to the environment and the taxpayer that make cheap food seem cheap. No thinking person will tell you they don't care about all that. I tell them the choice is simple: You can buy honestly priced food or you can buy irresponsibly priced food. ~ Michael Pollan

The country robs a thinking person of everything and gives him virtually nothing, whereas the city is perpetually giving. One has simply to see this, and of course feel it, but very few either see it or feel it, with the result that most people are sentimentally drawn to the country, where in no time they are inevitably sucked dry, deflated, and destroyed. The mind cannot develop in the country; it can develop only in the city, yet today everyone flees from the city to the country because people are basically too indolent to use their minds, on which the city makes the greatest demands, and so they choose to perish surrounded by nature, admiring it without knowing it, instead of seizing upon all the benefits the city has to offer, which have increased and multiplied quite miraculously over the years, and never more so than in recent years. ~ Thomas Bernhard

In progressive, middle-class circles these days, there's the overwhelming sense that procuring and cooking freshest, healthiest, most sustainably sourced food should be a top priority for any thinking person. ~ Emily Matchar

If you're a thinking person, the liver is interesting, but nothing is more intriguing than the brain. ~ Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

Bill [Condon] is such a great actor's director. He cares about what you're thinking. And, he's very open. Even though he was pressed for time, and he was doing two movies at once, and all this stuff was happening around him, he would still take time to sit there and talk to you about your scene and your character and what you were going through. That was really a treat. ~ Kellan Lutz

Ubuntu [...] speaks of the very essence of being human. [We] say [...] "Hey, so-and-so has ubuntu." Then you are generous, you are hospitable, you are friendly and caring and compassionate. You share what you have. It is to say, "My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours." We belong in a bundle of life. We say, "A person is a person through other persons."

[...] A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed, or treated as if they were less than who they are. ~ Desmond Tutu

To My Children,
I'm dedicating my little story to you; doubtless you will be among the very few who will ever read it. It seems war stories aren't very well received at this point. I'm told they're out-dated, untimely and as might be expected - make some unpleasant reading. And, as you have no doubt already perceived, human beings don't like to remember unpleasant things. They gird themselves with the armor of wishful thinking, protect themselves with a shield of impenetrable optimism, and, with a few exceptions, seem to accomplish their "forgetting" quite admirably.
But you, my children, I don't want you to be among those who choose to forget. I want you to read my stories and a lot of others like them. I want you to fill your heads with Remarque and Tolstoy and Ernie Pyle. I want you to know what shrapnel, and "88's" and mortar shells and mustard gas mean. I want you to feel, no matter how vicariously, a semblance of the feeling of a torn limb, a burnt patch of flesh, the crippling, numbing sensation of fear, the hopeless emptiness of fatigue. All these things are complimentary to the province of War and they should be taught and demonstrated in classrooms along with the more heroic aspects of uniforms, and flags, and honor and patriotism. I have no idea what your generation will be like. In mine we were to enjoy "Peace in our time". A very well meaning gentleman waved his umbrella and shouted those very words...less than a year before the whole world went to war. ~ Rod Serling

Once we see, however, that the probability of life originating at random is so utterly miniscule as to make it absurd, it becomes sensible to think that the favorable properties of physics on which life depends are in every respect deliberate ... It is therefore almost inevitable that our own measure of intelligence must reflect ... higher intelligences ... even to the limit of God ... such a theory is so obvious that one wonders why it is not widely accepted as being self-evident. The reasons are psychological rather than scientific. ~ Fred Hoyle

In my view, [the trade deficit] will create political turmoil at some point ... Pretty soon, I think there will be a big adjustment. ~ Warren Buffett

It's not even fair to want someone as heavily and wholly as I crave this person. I feel too small to contain it, and all he did was look at me. ~ Mary Elizabeth

I don't know how this works. Or why. I stopped trying to figure it out a long time ago. I'm never going to figure it out, any more than a normal person figure out his or her own existence. After a while, you have to be at peace with the fact that you simply are. There is no way to know why. You can have theories, but there will never be proof. ~ David Levithan

I don't want to be put on a pedestal. I want to be known as a nice and normal person, but my skills are a little more excelled. ~ Misty May-Treanor

A rich person who has no love in his heart is poorer than a poor person who has no money in his pocket. ~ Debasish Mridha

The only thing I do is just pray for inspiration, for a way of thinking, because I don't have any particular goal in sight. ~ Mike Tyson

But on the other hand, if you come under circumstances where each person is entitled to a pro-rata share of the pot, to take an extreme example, or even to a low level of the pie, than the effect of that situation is that free immigration, would mean a reduction of everybody to the same, uniform level. Of course, I'm exaggerating, it wouldn't go quite that far, but it would go in that direction. And it is that perception, that leads people to adopt what at first seems like inconsistent values. ~ Milton Friedman

When I have fully executed this phase of my life, then I can begin a new chapter. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I am totally against the war but violence is part of mankind and it's going to happen, but as musicians I think we've got to step up and say 'come on'. ~ Elton John

As a writer I want everybody to get a chance to voice their opinions. If each character thinks that they're telling the truth, then it's valid. Then at the end of the film, I leave it up to the audience to decide who did the right thing. ~ Spike Lee

Tom, I wonder' - upon which Mr. Gradgrind, who was the person overhearing, stepped forth into the light and said, 'Louisa, never wonder! ~ Anonymous

There have always been people like you, Nicholas Flamel. People who think they know what's best, who decide what people should see and read and listen to, who ultimately try to shape how the rest of the world think and acts. I've spent my entire life fighting the likes of you. ~ Michael Scott

I'm a people person when I'm out, but I'm a homebody. I like my time and peace and quiet. ~ Kid Cudi

First, there has been a lot of interest in The Drive-in, but, alas, it hasn't actually come to fruition. Maybe soon. Don really got Bubba and I didn't think it could be a film. I thought it was too odd to make it to film. He asked me to do the screenplay, but I declined. I didn't see that it could be a screenplay but he wrote one and proved me wrong. He was always considerate about what I thought about the film and the story's presentation, but in the end, he's the director and he had to make decisions. All good ones. ~ Joe R. Lansdale

When one person comes into contact with another, it is not simply coming together of person rather it is the first and the most important phase of coming together of humanity whether it is you and me or you and us or we and you friends. Unless it is engulfed by love and humanity the two qualifies which everybody professes or the eternal qualities essential for creating heaven in this very earth, which however, seems to be the most lacking in the present day traumatic situation of unhappiness, sorrows, woeful conditions, jealousies, hasted, abhorrence and so on, it will be simply wastage of the precious humanity. ~ Nutan Bajracharya

Forty years ago this country went down a rabbit hole in Vietnam and millions died. I fear we're going down a rabbit hole once again - and if people can stop and think and reflect on some of the ideas and issues in this movie, perhaps I've done some damn good here! ~ Errol Morris

I was doing the wrong thing, at the time I thought I was doing the right thing. It's like if you're dealing with somebody who is high on drugs, they can look back at it and say, "Wow, I was destroying myself." But during the period, they think they're doing the right thing. You just have to let the smoke clear so you can see the whole picture. ~ Ice-T

Take the limits off of yourself. You will never rise higher than your thinking. Create a great vision for your life. ~ Joel Osteen

Old me? There is no way to know. All I can do is decide if i trust Marcus or not. And while he has done cruel, evil things, our society is not divided into "good" and "bad". Cruelty does not make a person dishonest, the same way bravery does not make a person kind. Marcus is not good or bad, but both. Well, he is probably more bad than good ... ~ Veronica Roth

The lack is not in intelligence, which is in plentiful supply; rather, the scarce commodity is systematic training in critical thinking. ~ Carl Sagan

I like bossy girls. I don't like girls who just do whatever they think you want them to do, and follow you around trying to please you all the time. ~ Jarvis Cocker

"The word which God has written on the brow of every person," wrote Victor Hugo, "is Hope." As long as we have hope no situation is hopeless. ~ Wilferd Peterson

As for George Bush of Kennebunkport, Maine- personally I think he's further evidence that the Great Scriptwriter in the Sky has an overdeveloped sense of irony. ~ Molly Ivins

We can prevent anger to a very large extent by anticipating its causes and planning in advance. A person who gets angry frequently is a person who has not planned well enough to tackle any unexpected situations from cropping up. The better your planning is, lesser the chances of you having to face any unexpected situations and lesser becomes the chance of your getting angry. ~ Awdhesh Singh

In effect, it creates the illusion that there is more than One God - Allah and God. The response of the English speaking person of another faith is to say: I do not understand your religion; you have a different God than I do and you call Him Allah.

It needs to be clearly explained to English speaking Muslims that, unlike what they may feel, they do not have a monopoly on the word Allah. Arabic speaking Christians and Arabic speaking Jews also refer to God as Allah. The Old Testament and New Testament when translated into Arabic use Allah for God. ~ Laleh Bakhtiar

Nothing resembles a person as much as the way he dies. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

In the perspective of every person lies a lens through which we may better understand ourselves. ~ Ellen Langer

Loving another person is a wonderful thing, and if that love is sincere, no one ends up tossed into a labyrinth. You have to have more faith in yourself. ~ Haruki Murakami

My goal is to get people thinking and trying to wrap their heads around the amazing things that have been achieved and to dream about what will be achieved. ~ Neil Turok

Some people get lots of pleasure; From books or from music or art; But boys seem to think it's fantastic; To just have a really good fart. ~ Giles Andreae