Thoughts About Thinking

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed. 

— Blaise Pascal

Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence. 
— Thomas Szasz 

Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
— Martin Luther King Jr.

I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else. 
— Lily Tomlin

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking. 
— Jerry Seinfeld

The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking. 
— A. A. Milne 

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. 
— Albert Einstein

When someone says "I'm not book smart, I'm street smart," all I hear is, "I'm not real smart, I'm imaginary smart."
— Matt Mattingly

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. 
— William James

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking. 
— John Kenneth Galbraith 

When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon. 
— Thomas Paine

When you control a man's thinking, you do not have to worry about his actions. 
— Carter G. Woodson

I began to realize how simple life could be if one had a regular routine to follow with fixed hours, a fixed salary and very little original thinking to do.
— Roald Dahl

The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.
— Thomas Sowell

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

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with one's own. 
— Arthur Schopenhauer

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.
— George S. Patton

All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings.
— Denis Diderot

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. 
— Carl Sagan

Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted.
— Bertrand Russell

The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.
— Marcus Aurelius

It's not uncommon for people in depression to be the inventory of their deficiencies. You can't tell a person in a depression what they are supposed to do. The point is they can't do anything. They are incapable of mustering their power.
— Philip Roth

Thoughts lead on to purposes; purposes go forth in action; actions form habits; habits decide character; and character fixes our destiny.
— Tyron Edwards

When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say. 
— Abraham Lincoln

Him neither stories of the gods, nor lightnings,
Nor heaven with muttering menaces could quell.
— Lucretius

Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.
— Henry David Thoreau

I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. 
— Henry David Thoreau

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so,
— William Shakespeare

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking. 
— Marcus Aurelius

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
-- Albert Einstein

My friend Alec Novakow contributed this:
The very intelligent usually are uninterested in gold stars and fucking bullshit.
— William Monahan


And my friend Ken Barnett, this:
All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

I think that may well be true. Having the body occupied with a simple task frees the unconscious mind to range free, in some fashion, as my friend Elleston Trevor used to tell me.