Quotes

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.  ~Richard Dawkins.

No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.  ~Voltaire

The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking.  ~Albert Einstein

Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.  ~Edmund Burke

You and I are not what we eat; we are what we think.  ~Walter Anderson, The Confidence Course, 1997

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.  ~Soren Kierkegaard

Too often we… enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.  ~John F. Kennedy

The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.  ~Will Durant

Begin challenging your own assumptions.  Your assumptions are your windows on the world.  Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won’t come in.  ~Alan Alda

The forceps of our minds are clumsy things and crush the truth a little in the course of taking hold of it.  ~H.G. Wells

Our minds are lazier than our bodies.  ~François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1678

Invest a few moments in thinking.  It will pay good interest.  ~Author Unknown

Some people get lost in thought because it’s such unfamiliar territory.  ~G. Behn

Thinking is like loving and dying.  Each of us must do it for himself.  ~Josiah Royce

It is well for people who think, to change their minds occasionally in order to keep them clean.  ~Luther Burbank

Our job is not to make up anybody’s mind, but to open minds and to make the agony of the decision-making so intense you can escape only by thinking.  ~Author Unknown

The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life.  The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clichés.  ~H.L. Mencken, Prejudices, 1925

Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once a week.  ~George Bernard Shaw

Belief is when someone else does the thinking.  ~Buckminster Fuller, 1972

A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man.  But they don’t bite everybody.  ~Stanislaw Lec, Unkempt Thoughts, 1962

At a certain age some people’s minds close up; they live on their intellectual fat.  ~William Lyon Phelps

Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, and mankind the vessel.  ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

Believing is easier than thinking.  Hence so many more believers than thinkers.  ~Bruce Calvert

Few minds wear out; more rust out.  ~Christian N. Bovee

Opinion is that exercise of the human will which helps us to make a decision without information.  ~John Erskine

Men can live without air a few minutes, without water for about two weeks, without food for about two months - and without a new thought for years on end.  ~Kent Ruth

What luck for rulers, that men do not think.  ~Adolph Hitler

Doubt is not a pleasant state of mind, but certainty is absurd.  ~Voltaire, 1767

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth, more than ruin, more even than death.  Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit.  Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid.  Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.  ~Bertrand Russell

[Thinking is] what a great many people think they are doing when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.  ~William James

For those who do not think, it is best at least to rearrange their prejudices once in a while.  ~Luther Burbank

How wonderful that we have met with a paradox.  Now we have some hope of making progress.  ~Niels Bohr

He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.  ~William Drummond, Academical Questions

Ours is the age which is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to.  ~Howard Mumford Jones