Great Thinkers Quotes

• The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.

  Pablo Neruda

  Inspirational, Beauty, Book

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• It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

  Aristotle

  Inspirational, Motivational, Leadership

  Attributed to Aristotle in "Religion and the Pursuit of Truth" by Lowell Lindsay Bennion, p. 52, 1959.

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• The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Life, Passion, Soul

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• Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

  Albert Einstein (2015). “Bite-Size Einstein: Quotations on Just About Everything from the Greatest Mind of the Twentieth Century”, p.31, St. Martin's Press

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• First doubt, then inquire, then discover. This has been the process with all our great thinkers.

  Henry Thomas Buckle

  Discovery, Doubt, Firsts

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• Where the good begins.- Where the poor power of the eye can no longer see the evil impulse as such because it has become too subtle, man posits the realm of goodness; and the feeling that we have now entered the realm of goodness excites all those impulses which had been threatened and limited by the evil impulses, like the feeling of security, of comfort, of benevolence. Hence, the duller the eye, the more extensive the good. Hence the eternal cheerfulness of the common people and of children. Hence the gloominess and grief - akin to a bad conscience - of the great thinkers.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Children, Grief, Eye

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2010). “The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs”, p.115, Vintage

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• Through books you will meet poets and novelists whose creations will fire your imagination. You will meet the great thinkers who will share with you their philosophies, their concepts of the world, of humanity and of creation. You will learn about events that have shaped our history, of deeds both noble and ignoble. All of this knowledge is yours for the taking… Your library is a storehouse for mind and spirit. Use it well.

  Neil Armstrong

  Philosophy, Book, Fire

  Neil Armstrong's letter to the children of Troy, Michigan on the opening of its Public Library (1971), as quoted in "Why Libraries Matter: Letters to the Children of Troy, Michigan (From 1971)" by Lucas Reilly on Mental Floss, July 3, 2012.

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• We tend to think of great thinkers and innovators as soloists, but the truth is that the greatest innovative thinking doesn't occur in a vacuum.

  John C. Maxwell

  Thinking, Vacuums, Truth Is

  "How Successful People Think: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life". Book by John C. Maxwell, June 2009.

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• Through books you can start today where the great thinkers of yesterday left off, because books have immortalized man's knowledge. Thinkers, dead a thousand years, are as alive in their books today as when they walked the earth.

  Wilferd Peterson

  Motivational, Book, Men

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• Great thinkers think inductively, that is, they create solution and then seek out the problems that solution might solve; most companies think deductively, that is, defining a problem and then investigating different solutions.

  Joey Reiman

  Creativity, Thinking, Different

  Joey Reiman (2001). “Thinking for a Living: Creating Ideas That Revitalize Your Business, Career, and Life”, p.132, Taylor Trade Publishing

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• Great thinkers often learn, to their surprise, that new ideas are less than welcome.

  Gerd Gigerenzer

  Ideas, Welcome, Surprise

  Gerd Gigerenzer (2002). “Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real World”, p.46, Oxford University Press

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• A lot of great thinkers- like Einstein and Newton- come up with their best ideas when they're young because they don't yet think in the way that the establishment teaches them. Sometimes your lack of knowledge frees your mind to be creative and think in a different way. But you still have to be logical and figure out a practical way to get things done, even though you're looking at things differently.

  George Lucas

  Thinking, Ideas, Creative

  Source: www.seventeen.com

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• A great thinker once described innovative thinkers this way: "Some men see things as they are and say, 'Why?' I dream of things that never were and say, 'Why not?'" Innovative thinkers are constantly asking questions such as these. How can we improve recruiting, hiring and training. How can be add greater value to our products and services by making them even better? How can we do more to nourish the personal as well as professional development of our people? What more can we do as a good citizen where we do business?

  Rosabeth Moss Kanter

  Dream, Men, People

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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• Know thyself! This is the source of all wisdom, said the great thinkers of the past, and the sentence was written in golden letters on the temple of the gods. To know himself, Linnæus declared to be the essential indisputable distinction of man above all other creatures. I know, indeed, in study nothing more worthy of free and thoughtful man than the study of himself. For if we look for the purpose of our existence, we cannot possibly find it outside ourselves. We are here for our own sake.

  Karl Ernst von Baer

  Science, Thoughtful, Past

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• When God lets loose a great thinker on this planet, then all things are at risk. There is not a piece of science but its flank may be turned to-morrow; nor any literary reputation or the so-called eternal names of fame that many not be refused and condemned.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Names, Risk, Pieces

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• Right at this moment, I only want silence. I believe that the end of life is silence in the love people have for you. I've actually been running through what people have said about the end. Religion says that the end is one thing, because it serves their purpose. But great thinkers alike haven't always agreed. Shakespeare knew how to say it better than anyone else. Hamlet says 'The rest is silence.' And when you think of the noises of everyday life, you realize how particularly desirable that is. Silence.

  Vincent Price

  Running, Believe, Thinking

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• The host of men who stand between a great thinker and the average man are not automatic transmitters. They work on the ideas; perhaps that is why a genius usually hates his disciples.

  Walter Lippmann

  Hate, Men, Average

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• Every great thinker keeps a journal, you know.

  Trenton Lee Stewart

  Thinker, Mysterious Benedict Society, Journal

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• Not every President is a great speaker. Not every President is a great thinker. But in the modern era, every single President is a master of one thing: eye contact.

  Brad Meltzer

  Eye, President, Eras

  Brad Meltzer (2011). “The Inner Circle: The Culper Ring Trilogy 1”, p.109, Hachette UK

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• It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect.

  Hermann Hesse

  Life, Hate, Hippie

  Hermann Hesse (2015). “Siddhartha: An Indian Tale”, p.110, Om Books International

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• To neglect the wise sayings of great thinkers is to deny ourselves the truest education.

  William James

  Wise, Neglect, Deny

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• There is a real connection between culture and climate change. We all have a part to play and if you engage with life, you will get a new set of values, get off the consumer treadmill, and start to think, and it is these great thinkers who will rescue the planet.

  Vivienne Westwood

  Real, Thinking, Play

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• I've heard people say that the trouble with the world is that we haven't enough great leaders. I think we haven't enough great followers. I have stood side by side with great thinkers - surgeons, engineers, economists; people who deserve a great following - and have heard the crowd cheer me instead.

  Babe Ruth

  Cheer, Thinking, People

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• After Bruno's death, during the first half of the seventeenth century, Descartes seemed about to take the leadership of human thought... in promoting an evolution doctrine as regards the mechanical formation of the solar system... but his constant dread of persecution, both from Catholics and Protestants, led him steadily to veil his thoughts and even to suppress them. ...Since Roger Bacon, perhaps, no great thinker had been so completely abased and thwarted by theological oppression.

  Andrew Dickson White

  Catholic, Veils, Half

  "A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom". Book by Andrew Dickson White, Vol.1, Ch.1: The Visible Universe, p. 57, 1896.

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• I'll bet every great thinker and leader we've got
  Could see all kinds of things other people could not!
  So then why get upset if somebody like me
  Tries to look at the world just a bit differently?

  Al Yankovic

  People, Leader, Upset

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