Human Thought Quotes - Page 2

• As soon as the printing press started flooding Europe with books, people were complaining that there were too many books and that it was going to change philosophy and the course of human thought in ways that wouldnt necessarily be good.

  James Gleick

  Philosophy, Book, Europe

  "TMI: We've Always Had Too Much Information (And We've Survived Just Fine)" by James Gleick, bigthink.com.

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• Once a suggestion has entered the general atmosphere of human thought, it is very difficult to neutralise it.

  Patricia Wentworth

  Ideas, Atmosphere, Suggestions

  Patricia Wentworth (2016). “The Miss Silver Mysteries: Grey Mask, The Case Is Closed, and Lonesome Road”, p.361, Open Road Media

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• If any ambitious man have a fancy to revolutionize, at one effort, the universal world of human thought, human opinion, and human sentiment, the opportunity is his own -- the road to immortal renown lies straight, open, and unencumbered before him. All that he has to do is to write and publish a very little book. Its title should be simple -- a few plain words -- My Heart Laid Bare. But -- this little book must be true to its title.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Honesty, Lying, Book

  Edgar Allan Poe (2006). “The Portable Edgar Allan Poe”, p.601, Penguin

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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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• Anthropology has reached that point of development where the careful investigation of facts shakes our firm belief in the far-reaching theories that have been built up. The complexity of each phenomenon dawns on our minds, and makes us desirous of proceeding more cautiously. Heretofore we have seen the features common to all human thought

  Franz Boas

  Mind, Dawn, Development

  Franz Boas (1989). “A Franz Boas Reader: The Shaping of American Anthropology, 1883-1911”, p.108, University of Chicago Press

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• Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon Of human thought or form, where art thou gone? Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate? Ask why the sunlight not for ever Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain-river, Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown, Why fear and dream and death and birth Cast on the daylight of this earth Such gloom, why man has such a scope For love and hate, despondency and hope?

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Beauty, Dream, Art

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1871). “The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley: Complete in One Volume”, p.366

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• When to the Permanent is sacrificed the Mutable, the prize is thine: the drop returneth whence it came. The Open Path leads to the changeless change - Non-Being, the glorious state of Absoluteness, the Bliss past human thought.

  Alexander Pope

  Change, Past, Path

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• By conversing with the mighty dead, we imbibe sentiment with knowledge. We become strongly attached to those who can no longer either hurt or serve us, except through the influence which they exert over the mind. We feel the presence of that power which gives immortality to human thoughts and actions, and catch the flame of enthusiasm from all nations and ages.

  William Hazlitt

  Hurt, Reading, Flames

  William Hazlitt, Herschel Moreland Sikes, William Hallam Bonner, Gerald Lahey (1979). “The Letters of William Hazlitt”, p.224, Springer

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• Never can a new idea move within the law. It matters not whether that idea pertains to political and social changes or to any other domain of human thought and expression - to science, literature, music; in fact, everything that makes for freedom and joy and beauty must refuse to move within the law. How can it be otherwise? The law is stationary, fixed, mechanical, 'a chariot wheel' which grinds all alike without regard to time, place and condition, without ever taking into account cause and effect, without ever going into the complexity of the human soul.

  Emma Goldman

  Moving, Expression, Law

  Address to the Jury, delivered 9 July 1917, New York

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• Democracy is the product of human thought and reasoning. It's true that philosophers and thinkers have always imagined a utopia in which everything is as it ought to be and the people live in freedom and comfort. But this was not achieved until recent centuries.

  Simin Behbahani

  People, Democracy, Comfort

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The branches of mathematics are as various as the sciences to which they belong, and each subject of physical enquiry has its appropriate mathematics. In every form of material manifestation, there is a corresponding form of human thought, so that the human mind is as wide in its range of thought as the physical universe in which it thinks.

  Benjamin Peirce

  Thinking, Mind, Enquiry

  "Linear Associative Algebra" by Benjamin Peirce, (§ 2), 1882.

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• Some god or Weltgeist has been making a movie out of us for the past six thousand years, and now we have turned a corner on the movie set of reality and have discovered the boards propping up the two-dimensional monuments of human history. The movement of humanism has reached its limit, and now at that limit it is breaking apart into the opposites of mechanism and mysticism and moving along the circumference of a vast new sphere of posthuman thought.

  William Irwin Thompson

  Moving, Past, Reality

  William Irwin Thompson (1980). “Passages about Earth: An Exploration of the New Planetary Culture”, HarperCollins

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• The real cause of the great upheavals which precede changes of civilisations, such as the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of the Arabian Empire, is a profound modification in the ideas of the peoples .... The memorable events of history are the visible effects of the invisible changes of human thought .... The present epoch is one of these critical moments in which the thought of mankind is undergoing a process of transformation.

  Gustave Le Bon

  Real, Fall, Memorable

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• There is something at the bottom of every new human thought, every thought of genius, or even every earnest thought that springs up in any brain, which can never be communicated to others, even if one were to write volumes about it and were explaining one's idea for thirty-five years; there's something left which cannot be induced to emerge from your brain, and remains with you forever; and with it you will die, without communicating to anyone perhaps the most important of your ideas.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Spring, Writing, Ideas

  "The Idiot". Book by Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1868 - 1869.

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• A beautiful book is a victory won in all the battlefields of human thought.

  Honore de Balzac

  Beautiful, Book, Victory

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• Today's Gypsies, who have lived in Prague for only two generations, light a ritual fire wherever they work, a nomads' fire crackling only for the joy of it, a blaze of roughhewn wood like a child's laugh, a symbol of the eternity that preceded human thought, a free fire, a gift from heaven, a living sign of the elements unnoticed by the world-weary pedestrian, a fire in the ditches of Prague warming the wanderer's eye and soul.

  Bohumil Hrabal

  Children, Eye, Fire

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• And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Stars, Poetry, Desire

  "Ulysses" l. 30 (1842)

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• Magic is a kind of energy. It is given shape by human thoughts and emotions, by imagination. Thoughts define that shape—and words help to define those thoughts. That’s why wizards usually use words to help them with their spells. Words provide a sort of insulation as the energy of magic burns through a spell caster’s mind.

  Jim Butcher

  Imagination, Magic, Mind

  Jim Butcher (2001). “Fool Moon: Book two of The Dresden Files”, p.94, Penguin

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• What a frightful weapon is human thought! It is our defense and our safeguard, the most precious gift that God has made us. It is ours and it obeys us; we may launch it forth into space, but, once outside of our feeble brains, it is gone; we can no longer control it.

  Alfred de Musset

  Space, Brain, Gone

  Alfred de Musset (1923). “Confession of a child of the century”

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• Human thought, flying on the trapezes of the star-filled universe, with mathematics stretched beneath, was like an acrobat working with a net but suddenly noticing that in reality there is no net.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Stars, Reality, Flying

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• The velocity of light occupies an extraordinary place in modern physics. It is lèse-majesté to make any criticism of the velocity of light. It is a sacred cow within a sacred cow, and it is just about the Absolutest Absolute in the history of human thought.

  Anthony Standen

  Science, Light, Criticism

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• Every new medium transforms the nature of human thought. In the long run, history is the story of information becoming aware of itself.

  James Gleick

  Running, Long, Stories

  James Gleick (2011). “The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood”, p.12, HarperCollins UK

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• The everlasting universe of things Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, Now dark--now glittering--now reflecting gloom-- Now lending splendour, where from secret springs The source of human thought its tribute brings.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Spring, Dark, Secret

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Illustrated)”, p.278, Delphi Classics

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• We, or at least I, can have no conception of human life and human thought in a hundred years or fifty years. Perhaps my greatest wisdom is the knowledge that I do not know. The sad ones are those who waste their energy in trying to hold it back, for thy can only feel bitterness in loss and no joy in gain.

  John Steinbeck

  Loss, Years, Joy

  John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.64, Penguin

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• Human thought can literally transform the physical world .. we are the masters of our own universe

  Dan Brown

  World, Masters, Humans

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