Thinker Quotes - Page 28

• All great thinkers are initially ridiculed - and eventually revered.

  Robin Sharma

  Inspirational, Success, Powerful

  Twitter post from Oct 29, 2015

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• Along with William Shakespeare and Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin is Britain's greatest gift to the world. He was our greatest thinker.

  Richard Dawkins

  World, Evolution, Newton

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• Many of the left thinkers that really matter to me - that formed a big part of my thinking about politics and art - emphasize how capitalism is a totality, how there's no escape from it, no outside.

  Ben Lerner

  Art, Thinking, Matter

  "Despair strikes me as eminently reasonable and boring". Interview with Tao Lin, believermag.com. September 2014.

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• Creatures extremely low in the intellectual scale may have conception. All that is required is that they should recognize the same experience again. A polyp would be a conceptual thinker if a feeling of 'Hello! thingumbob again!' ever flitted through its mind.

  William James

  Feelings, Intellectual, Mind

  William James (1955). “The principles of psychology”

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• I'm increasingly on the side of thinkers like David Graeber who are talking back to this notion of totality and emphasizing how there are all kinds of moments in our daily lives that break - or at least could break - from the logic of profit and the modes of domination it entails. Zones of freedom, even if it's never pure.

  Ben Lerner

  Talking, Sides, Logic

  "Despair strikes me as eminently reasonable and boring". Interview with Tao Lin, believermag.com. September 2014.

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• Profound minds are the most likely to think lightly of the resources of human reason, and it is the superficial thinker who is generally strongest in every kind of unbelief.

  Humphry Davy

  Thinking, Profound, Mind

  Sir Humphry Davy, J. D., John DAVY (M.D., F.R.S.) (1851). “Salmonia: or, Days of fly fishing ... By an Angler i.e. Sir Humphry Davy . Third edition. With plates”, p.168

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• Virtually every subject is most effectively learned directly from the greatest thinkers, historians, artists, philosophers, scientists, prophets and their original works. Great works inspire greatness. Mediocre or poor works inspire mediocre or poor learning. The great accomplishments of humanity are the key to quality education.

  Oliver DeMille

  Artist, Greatness, Keys

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• Just as the line of astronomical thinkers from Copernicus to Newton had destroyed the old astronomy, in which the earth was the center, and the Almighty sitting above the firmament the agent in moving the heavenly bodies about it with his own hands, so now a race of biological thinkers had destroyed the old idea of a Creator minutely contriving and fashioning all animals to suit the needs and purposes of man.

  Andrew Dickson White

  Moving, Animal, Men

  Andrew Dickson White (2012). “A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom: From Creation to the Victory of Scientific and Literary Methods”, p.49, Transaction Publishers

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• I want to take my American friends back to the end of World War II, when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was formulated. A group of thinkers met to come up with ways and means to prevent yet another war. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt played a crucial role in assembling this group of people. And that is why the name of the United States is synonymous with the cause of human rights around the world.

  Shirin Ebadi

  War, Mean, Rights

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• There is a saying that no man has tasted the full flavour of life until he has known poverty, love and war. The justness of this reflection commends it to the lover of condensed philosophy. The three conditions embrace about all there is in life worth knowing. A surface thinker might deem that wealth should be added to the list. Not so. When a poor man finds a long-hidden quarter-dollar that has slipped through a rip into his vest lining, he sounds the pleasure of life with a deeper plummet than any millionaire can hope to cast.

  O. Henry

  Philosophy, War, Rip

  O. Henry (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry (Illustrated)”, p.621, Delphi Classics

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• Books are health food for your brain and dessert for your soul. Books are one of the few proven sources of mental exercise known to man. Reading is a workout for your mind. If your body needs thirty minutes of exercise a day, so does your thinker.

  Pat Williams

  Workout, Book, Reading

  Pat Williams, Peggy Matthews Rose, Phil Jackson (2007). “Read for Your Life: 11 Ways to Better Yourself Through Books”, p.38, Health Communications, Inc.

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• You can think negatively or positively. If you are a positive thinker, you will base your decisions on faith rather than fear.

  Robert H. Schuller

  Thinking, Decision, Ifs

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• Kierkegaard was by far the most profound thinker of the last century. Kierkegaard was a saint.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Profound, Saint, Lasts

  "Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard on the ethico-religious". Ideas in History, Vol. 1, 2006.

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• A very good friend of mine spent a fair amount of time doing postmortems and met with a number of the senior folks on the Romney campaign and they spent, what was it, $140, $160 million on data. And this friend of mine, who is a very sharp thinker, asked a series of questions, but the most important one he asked, he said, "What decisions did you make differently because of the data?" And he's coming from the private equity world where he wants to know, OK, and the answer from virtually every single senior Romney person was "nothing."

  Ted Cruz

  Senior, Good Friend, Numbers

  Interview with Glenn Thrush, www.politico.com. July 18, 2016.

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• It is only the inferior thinker who hastens to explain the singular and the complex by the primitive shortcut of supernaturalism.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Shortcuts, Primitive, Complexes

  H. P. Lovecraft (2016). “H. P. LOVECRAFT äóñ The Ultimate Horror Collection: 60 Occult & Supernatural Mysteries in One Volume: The Greatest Spine-Chilling and Blood-Curdling Stories of Terror & Macabre: The Call of Cthulhu, The White Ship, The Dunwich Horror, At The Mountains Of Madness, The Whisperer in Darknessäó_”, p.106, e-artnow

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• I feel that I've often pointed out that there are countless aspects of life and nature that scientists and scientific thinkers cannot explain. Why the universe is accelerating in its expansion and what came before the Big Bang serve as compelling examples. The process of science provides a way to seek answers to those questions.

  Bill Nye

  Answers, Way, Bangs

  "BioLogos Interviews Bill Nye". Interview with Brad Kramer, biologos.org. February 4, 2015.

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• Nobody is made anything by hearing of rules, or laying them up in his memory; practice must settle the habit of doing, without reflecting on the rule; and you may as well hope to make a good painter, or musician, extempore, by a lecture and instruction in the arts of music and painting, as a coherent thinker, or a strict reasoner, by a set of rules, showing him wherein right reasoning consists.

  John Locke

  Art, Memories, Practice

  John Locke, James Augustus St. John (1872). “Philosophical Works: Preliminary discourse by the editor. On the conduct of the understanding. An essay concerning human understanding”, p.37

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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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• It seemed perfectly possible that, in spite of my certainty of my own genius, I might die of some illness, or perhaps even in a street accident, before I had ever glimpsed the meaning of life. My moods of happiness and self-confidence convinced me that I had a "destiny" to become a famous writer, and to be remembered as one of the most important thinkers of the century.

  Colin Wilson

  Self Confidence, Destiny, Important

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• I love to consider an Infidel, whether distinguished by the title of deist, atheist, or free-thinker.

  Richard Steele

  Atheist, Atheism, Titles

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele, Alexander Chalmers (1822). “The Tatler”, p.199

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• Genius everywhere is one. In the Orient and in the Occident the deep thinkers are kin, the poets are cousins, the pioneers of the spirit are the messengers of peace and good will to the world. Their works are the open highways between nations, and they themselves are the ever living guardians and guides.

  Ameen Rihani

  Cousin, World, Messengers

  Ameen Rihani (2016). “The Book of Khalid: A Critical Edition”, p.379, Syracuse University Press

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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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• Information is key to raising awareness of what our brain withholds from our conscious mind. Unfortunately we are hardwired emotion-driven thinkers. It takes effort and training to exercise introspection and mindfulness.

  David Bloor

  Exercise, Keys, Effort

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• Since Khomeini's death, the popular appeal of an Islamic state - and of fundamentalism - has surely dimmed. Thinkers still debate and warriors kill, but no country seems prepared to emulate Iran. Perhaps revolutions happen only under majestic leaders, and no one like Khomeini has since appeared.

  Ruhollah Khomeini

  Country, Islamic, Warrior

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• The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a nobler race of men.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Father, Men, Race

  Henry David Thoreau (1995). “Walden, Or, Life in the Woods”, p.9, Courier Corporation

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