quotations about thought
My thoughts are whirled like a potter's wheel.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
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Henry VI, Part I
New conditions of life will stimulate thought and give new forms to its expression.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Round Table
It is ... no doubt, true that thought will not at once produce wisdom. It may almost be a question whether such wisdom as many of us have in our mature years has not come from the dying out of the power of temptation, rather than as the results of thought and resolution.
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
The Small House at Allington
My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.
JOHN GREEN
The Fault in Our Stars
You may glean knowledge by reading, but you must separate the chaff from the wheat by thinking.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
If you're up against a smart opponent, make him think himself to death.
C. J. CHERRYH
Chanur's Legacy
Thought as such ... is an act of negation, of resistance to that which is forced upon it.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Negative Dialectics
Thought is the parent. If error has crept in among the little thoughts, and the children have become disobedient and refractory, it is not the parent's fault. Nor must you blame the children either; they are young yet, and you must not expect too much of them.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
Thoughts
Thought
Has joys apart, even in blackest woe,
And seizing some fine thread of verity
Knows momentary godhead.
GEORGE ELIOT
The Spanish Gypsy
From thinking proceeds speaking; thence to acting is often but a single step. But how irrevocable and tremendous!
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to John Jay, August 1, 1786
Thought and action are the jailers of Fate -- they imprison, being base; they are also the angels of Freedom -- they liberate being noble.
JAMES ALLEN
As a Man Thinketh
Hold fast, therefore, O circular philosopher, to thy centre, and drive the globe along its orbit by the momentum of thy thought.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Only in thought is man a God; in action and desire we are the slaves of circumstance.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
letter to Lucy Donnely, November 25, 1902
Whether thoughts and ideas manifest in a material outcome depends on our transmission of them into perceived reality.
LY DE ANGELES
Tarot Theory and Practice
Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.
ALFRED TENNYSON
Locksley Hall
I am full of thoughts,
A thousand wheels toss my uncertain fears,
There is a storm in my hot boiling brains,
Which rises without wind. A horrid one.
THOMAS DEKKER
The Noble Spanish Soldier
Thought, stumbling, plods
Past fallen temples, vanished gods,
Altars unincensed, fanes undecked,
Eternal systems flown or wrecked;
Through trackless centuries that grant
To the poor trudge refreshment scant,
Age after age, pants on to find
A melting mirage of the mind.
ALFRED AUSTIN
"A Defence of English Spring", Lyrical Poems
We must allow ourselves to think, we must dare to think, even though we fail. It is in the nature of things that we always fail, because we suddenly find it impossible to order our thoughts, because the process of thinking requires us to consider every thought there is, every possible thought. Fundamentally we have always failed, like all the others, whoever they were, even the greatest minds. At some point, they suddenly failed and their system collapsed, as is proved by their writings, which we admire because they venture farthest into failure. To think is to fail, I thought.
THOMAS BERNHARD
Extinction
Old men tend to forget what thought was like in their youth; they forget the quickness of the mental jump, the daring of the youthful intuition, the agility of the fresh insight. They become accustomed to the more plodding varieties of reason, and because this is more than made up by the accumulation of experience, old men think themselves wiser than the young.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Pebble in the Sky