quotations about thought
The history of human thought recalls the swinging of a pendulum which takes centuries to swing. After a long period of slumber comes a moment of awakening. Then thought frees herself from the chains with which those interested -- rulers, lawyers, clerics -- have carefully enwound her. She shatters the chains. She subjects to severe criticism all that has been taught her, and lays bare the emptiness of the religious political, legal, and social prejudices amid which she has vegetated. She starts research in new paths, enriches our knowledge with new discoveries, creates new sciences.
PETER KROPOTKIN
Anarchist Morality
The course of history has often been turned by sentiment, but by thought never. The thinkers are but valuable ornaments. A safe place is assigned to them on the world's mantelpiece, while humanity basks and blinks stupidly on the hearth.
MAX BEERBOHM
The Prince of Minor Writers: The Selected Essays of Max Beerbohm
I don't believe in thought. Too much thinking.
PHILIP MOELLER
The Roadhouse in Arden
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
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
Cut off, or cut free, from speech, thought assumes its baroque writerly structures. Speech in a language of which he knows only a few words involves the conscious, patient, awkward, hilarious, and typically unsuccessful translation of thought. This process illuminates the gulf between thought and speech, which is not quite identical to the gulf between inside and outside.
MICHAEL W. CLUNE
"Thought Against Life: Cyrus Console's 'Romanian Notebook'", L.A. Review of Books, May 21, 2017
Borrowed thoughts, like borrowed money, only reveal the poverty that necessitates the loan.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
And a lot of times, the journey of someone who is struggling with mental health issues or with suicidal thoughts is a long, lonely walk.
TERRESA HUMPHRIES-WADSWORTH
"Walking Across Wyoming", Powell Tribune, May 26, 2017
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.
CHARLOTTE M. MASON
The Original Home Schooling Series
Thought as such ... is an act of negation, of resistance to that which is forced upon it.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Negative Dialectics
Though old the thought and oft expressed,
'Tis his at last who says it best.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
For an Autograph
Nothing in this world requires such long seasoning and ripening as new thoughts.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
My thoughts are my company; I can bring them together, select them, detain them, dismiss them.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Imaginary Conversations
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
Ideas are the seeds of thought, but they do not produce flowers unless the soil where they are sown is fertile.
LADY BLESSINGTON
attributed, Day's Collacon
An author who sets his reader on sounding the depths of his own thoughts serves him best.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Action helps thought, and thought helps action. By action thought is rendered more masculine, attains to greater breadth, and acquires a certain nobleness and dignity. Thanks to thought, action may become more definite, more precise, more fruitful.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
You could attach prices to thoughts. Some cost a lot, some a little. And how does one pay for thoughts? The answer, I think, is: with courage.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Culture and Value
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
Thought is pure energy. Every thought you have, have ever had, and ever will have is creative. The energy of your thought never ever dies. Ever. It leaves your being and heads out into the universe, extending forever. A thought is forever.
NEALE DONALD WALSCH
Conversations with God