Turkish Thinkers Quotes

Great ideas behave like the Sun. Even in the middle of nowhere, they find people and shine on them! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Love creates bridges much more than all the engineers of the world! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Owls are known as lonely birds; but it is not known that they have the forest as their best friend! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Same ideas don't create same faces but they create same behaviors! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

There is no pleasure in flying to the top! The pleasure is climbing up there step by step, feeling every single muscle! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

When the time came to move forward, don't even think about to look at back for even a second! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

If an earth with no other creatures but only humans would be possible, it would be unbearably boring! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

I just got another kitten, you know. Found another trademark. It's quite embarrassing I missed it."
"Nine cats? They can send you to prison for that."
He pushed his glasses back on his nose. "I'm calling him Murad, after the cigarettes."
"Never heard of them."
"They're an obsolete Turkish brand, popular in the 1910s and '20s. Murad means 'desire' in Arabic. The only brand that ever appears in a Cordova film is Murad. There's not one Marlboro, Camel, or Virginia Slim. It goes further. If the Murad cigarette is focused upon by the camera in any Cordova film. The very next person who appears on-screen has been devastatingly targeted. In other words, the gods will have drawn a great big X across his shoulder blades and taped an invisible sign there that reads FUCKED. His life will henceforth never be the same. ~ Marisha Pessl

Cats strongly believe that everywhere is designed for their comfort! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Simply to render oneself able to understand what other Christian thinkers have themselves come to understand and to more or less felicitously communicate requires that one's mind not be a blank slate but already properly formed, disciplined, and exercised. ~ Gregory B. Sadler

Read positive books; see positive things and surround yourself with positive thinkers; life will be full with positivity. ~ Amit Ray

Little by little, not without astonishment, I rediscovered the great names of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, who had been the master thinkers of my grandfather and other Mexican liberals. They did no offer me a doctrine or a catechism: they were and they are a source, an inspiration. ~ Octavio Paz

Don't ever be a stupid shadow who follows perfectly his leader no matter what foolishness his leader does! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

So what Nietzsche says here is this: the better among the contemporary atheists, with whom Nietzsche is to some extent in agreement, will come to know what they are doing. They do not know it now. Now they are perfectly self–satisfied and think that they are free thinkers. They will come to realize that there is something infinitely more terrible, depressing, and degrading than religion or theism. [...] You have no idea what you are letting yourselves in for. The utter senselessness, the irrelevance of man which is implied in that atheism and you fools don't see it. ~ Leo Strauss

If true happiness depended on the thoughts of man, then all philosophers and deep thinkers would be filled to overflowing with it. ~ Sadhu Sundar Singh

The act of thinking and interpreting is so central to Judaism that it makes more sense that we've become people like Woody Allen - thinkers and talkers and drafters of law. ~ Tony Kushner

Thinkers do not accept the inevitable; they turn their efforts toward changing it. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda

To me the great divide is between the talkative and the quiet. Do they just say everything that's on their minds, even before it's on their minds? Sometimes I think I could just turn up my head like a Walkman so what's going on there could be heard by others. But there would still be a difference. For inside the head they are talking to people like them, and I am talking to someone like me: he is quiet and doesn't much like being talked at; he can't conceal how easily he gets bored. ~ James Richardson

Positive thinkers always affirm blessings on themselves and see themselves as legitimate heirs. ~ Israelmore Ayivor

Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers. ~ Emile M. Cioran

Slow thinkers are part of the game too. Some of these slow thinkers can hit a ball a long way. ~ Alvin Dark

Two types of leaders: there are thinkers and there are doers. Some are idea generators and others are the implementers. ~ Gary Rohrmayer

Challenging boundaries is not simply social rebellion. It is the catalyst of social evolution. When systems go unchallenged, they grow complacent and corrupt. Raising generation after generation of rule followers and conformists may be more convenient for society, but it inevitably leads to tyranny and, ultimately, revolution. Raising independent thinkers, conscious objectors, and peaceful activists creates a social balance that can endure. Peaceful parenting, then, by its very nature, is socially responsible because it creates the catalysts of social evolution that protect our society from the complacency and corruption that lead to tyranny and revolution. ~ L.R. Knost

I had a real revelation. We were all in robes, and they made some Turkish coffee for us. The professor explained how the coffee was made very different from anywhere else, and I realized, 'So fucking what?' Which kids even in Turkey give a shit about Turkish coffee? All day I had looked at young people in Istanbul. They were all drinking what every other kind in the world drinks, and they were wearing clothes that look like they were bought at the Gap, and they are all using cell phones. They were like kids everywhere else. It hit me that, for young people, this whole world is the same now. When we're making products, there is no such thing as a Turkish phone, or a music player that young people in Turkey would want that's different from one young people elsewhere would want. We're just one world now. ~ Walter Isaacson

There s a metaphor which I love: living like a drawing compass. As you know, one leg of the compass is static, rooted in a place. Meanwhile, the other leg draws a wide circle, constantly moving. Like that, my fiction as well. One part of it is rooted in Istanbul with strong Turkish roots. But the other part travels the world, connecting to different cultures. ~ Elif Shafak

If you extol reason, then what matters is the integrity of the thoughts, not the personalities of the thinkers ~ Steven Pinker

Some politicians are much noisier than the dogs! Just like teaching a dog how to hush, public must likewise teach those politicians to shush! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

It is impossible to understand how millions & millions of people all obey a sickly collection of gentlemen that call themselves Government! The word, I expect, frightens people. It is a form of planetary hypnosis, & very unhealthy. It has been going on for years, I said. And it only occurred to relatively few to disobey & make what they call revolutions. If they won their revolutions, which they occasionally did, they made more governments, sometimes more cruel & stupid than the last. Men are very difficult to understand, said Carmella. Let's hope they all freeze to death. I am sure it would be very pleasant & healthy for human beings to have no authority whatever. They would have to think for themselves, instead of always being told what to do & think by advertisements, cinemas, policemen, & parliaments. ~ Leonora Carrington

Since many things we see were once an idea, let us create good ideas today because they will be the realities of tomorrow! When you create an idea, do not forget that you shape the future! Idea is your God side! With ideas, you can change the universe, but only with very great ideas! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

800,000 Armenian deportees were actually killed ... by holding the guilty accountable the government is intent on cleansing the bloody past. ~ Djemal Pasha

A waterfall cannot be silent, just as the wisdom! When they speak, the voice of power speaks! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

I recognize that many physicists are smarter than I am-most of them theoretical physicists. A lot of smart people have gone into theoretical physics, therefore the field is extremely competitive. I console myself with the thought that although they may be smarter and may be deeper thinkers than I am, I have broader interests than they have. ~ Linus Pauling

When the others were picked up and walked home by friends or fathers or best friend's sisters,
I was the kid in a grey hoodie, walking with the poets, the singers, the thinkers, and I was not alone. ~ Charlotte Eriksson

One might feel that, at my age, I should look on life with more gravity. After all, I've been privileged to listen, firsthand, tosome of the most profound thinkers of my daywho were all beset by gloom over the condition the world had gotten into. Then why can't I view it with anything but amusement? ~ Anita Loos

There is always a melancholic silence before entering every New Year! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Mujo is a refugee in Germany, has no job, but has a lot of time, so he goes to a Turkish bath. The bath is full of German businessmen with towels around their waists, huffing and puffing, but every once in a while a cell phone rings and they pull their phone out from under the towel and say, Bitte? Mujo seems to be the only one without a cell phone, so he goes to the bathroom and stuffs toilet paper up his butt. He walks back out, a long trail of toilet paper behind him. So a German says, you have some paper, Herr, sticking out behind you. Oh, Mujo says, it looks like I have received a fax. ~ Aleksandar Hemon

I think many thinkers and activists, even in the Islamist parties like the Muslim Brotherhood, and the people who left the Muslim Brotherhood to follow Abou el-Fatouh, these people do have an understanding that the relationship between religion and the state must be re-thought and re-assessed. They're not going to use the concept of secularism in any straightforward way, because the concept of secularism is still far too loaded in that part of the world. ~ Tariq Ramadan

Or there were the poets and thinkers. Suppose he had had that passion, and had gone to Sir William Bradshaw, a great doctor yet to her extremely evil, without sex or lust, extremely polite to women, but capable of some indescribable outrage - forcing your soul, that was it - if this young man had gone to him, and Sir William impressed him, like that, with his power, might he not then have said (indeed she felt it now), Life is made intolerable; they make life intolerable, men like that? ~ Virginia Woolf

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end. There is not a piece of science, but its flank may be turned to-morrow; there is not any literary reputation, not the so-called eternal names of fame, that may not be revised and condemned. The very hopes of man, the thoughts of his heart, the religion of nations, the manner and morals of mankind, are all at the mercy of a new generalization. Generalization is always a new influx of the divinity into the mind. Hence the thrill that attends it. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Countries which are governed by the dabblers will undoubtedly turn into the miserable countries! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

What, in fact, do we know about the peak experience? Well, to begin with, we know one thing that puts us several steps ahead of the most penetrating thinkers of the 19th century: that P.E'.s are not a matter of pure good luck or grace. They don't come and go as they please, leaving 'this dim, vast vale of tears vacant and desolate'. Like rainbows, peak experiences are governed by definite laws. They are 'intentional'.

And that statement suddenly gains in significance when we remember Thorndike's discovery that the effect of positive stimuli is far more powerful and far reaching than that of negative stimuli. His first statement of the law of effect was simply that situations that elicit positive reactions tend to produce continuance of positive reactions, while situations that elicit negative or avoidance reactions tend to produce continuance of these. It was later that he came to realise that positive reactions build-up stronger response patterns than negative ones. In other words, positive responses are more intentional than negative ones.

Which is another way of saying that if you want a positive reaction (or a peak experience), your best chance of obtaining it is by putting yourself into an active, purposive frame of mind. The opposite of the peak experience - sudden depression, fatigue, even the 'panic fear' that swept William James to the edge of insanity - is the outcome of passivity. This cannot be overemphasised. Depression - or neurosis - need ~ Colin Wilson

We forget that we create the situations, then we give our power away by blaming the other person for our frustration. No person, no place, and no thing has any power over us, for "we" are the only thinkers in our mind. We create our experiences, our reality, and everyone in it. When we create peace and harmony and balance in our mind, we will find it in our lives. ~ Louise Hay

My shipmates and I only grasped our roles on the very superficial level we were taught. We were fighting the bad guys. They were the bad guys because we were told that they were the bad guys. We had to control, infiltrate, and shove our authority around the world because we were its greatest nation. We had the shiniest ships, the biggest guns, the deadliest weapons, and the cockiest egos. And if we thought otherwise, we were vicious traitors. The military condemns rebels, thinkers, and doubt. The military loves obedience, loyalty, and oblivion. Its core values are, after all, "Honor, Courage, and Commitment. ~ Maggie Young

But who, save the nerve-worn and sleepless, or thinkers standing with hands to the eyes on some crag above the multitude, see things thus in skeleton outline, bare of flesh? ~ Virginia Woolf

I had a friend in college who loved to say: 'If you can dream it, you can do it.' It became my mantra. I assumed it was a pearl of wisdom from some great thinker, a philosopher perhaps, like Descartes. It turned out to be Walt Disney, which in no way diminishes the wisdom of the advice. Anyone who can build a Magic Kingdom deserves to be listened to. ~ Michele Gorman

Marxists have some way of analyzing the development of affairs which enables them to judge far in advance of scientific thinkers what the trend of social and economic development is to be. ~ John Desmond Bernal

Before contemporary feminist movement was less than 10 years old, feminist thinkers began to talk about the way in which patriarchy was harmful to men. Without changing our fierce critique of male domination feminist politics expanded to include the recognition that patriarchy stripped men of certain rights, imposing on them a sexist masculine identity. ~ Bell Hooks

But from the Parthenon and the Timaeus a specious logic leads to the tyranny which, in the Republic, is held up as the ideal form of government. In the field of politics the equivalent of a theorem is a perfectly disciplined army; of a sonnet or picture, a police state under a dictatorship. The Marxist calls himself scientific and to this claim the Fascist adds another: he is the poet - the scientific poet - of a new mythology. Both are justified in their pretentions; for each applies to human situations the procedures which have proved effective in the laboratory and the ivory tower. They simplify, they abstract, they eliminate all that, for their purposes, is irrelevant and ignore whatever they choose to regard as inessential; they impose a style, they compel the facts to verify a favorite hypothesis, they consign to the waste paper basket all that, to their mind, falls short of perfection. And because they thus act like good artists, sound thinkers and tried experimenters, the prisons are full, political heretics are worked to death as slaves, the rights and preferences of mere individuals are ignored, the Gandhis are murdered and from morning till night a million schoolteachers and broadcasters proclaim the infallibility of the bosses who happen at the moment to be in power. ~ Aldous Huxley

Superficial cannot discover the deep, because both live in different levels and likewise the deep cannot meet the deepest! Change your level to reach at different levels! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Kissinger projects a strong impression of a man at home in the world and on top of his brief. But there are a number of occasions when it suits him to pose as a sort of Candide: naive, and ill-prepared for and easily unhorsed by events. No doubt this pose costs him something in point of self-esteem. It is a pose, furthermore, which he often adopts at precisely the time when the record shows him to be knowledgeable, and when knowledge or foreknowledge would also confront him with charges of responsibility or complicity. ~ Christopher Hitchens

In primary school, every day and especially on Fridays, I was supposed to say, 'I am Turkish, and I am righteous and hardworking,' But all those things did not actually turn us into Turks. This system is somehow creating fake personalities. ~ Osman Baydemir

If you want to make a difference, think different ~ Palle Oswald

Everyone asks me why someone Turkish is making Greek yogurt. In Greece, it is not called 'Greek yogurt.' Everywhere in the world it is called 'strained yogurt.' But because it was introduced in this country by a Greek company, they called it 'Greek yogurt.' ~ Hamdi Ulukaya