Thinker Quotes - Page 3

• Why should thinkers mock the simple pieties of the people?

  Simon Blackburn

  Simple, People, Should

  Simon Blackburn (1999). “Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy”, p.132, Oxford University Press

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• Since lawyers are thinkers and not feelers, and their moral development is locked into the rigidity of maintaining law and order, they often come across as impersonal, insensitive, amoral, and not particularly human to the clients they serve.

  Thane Rosenbaum

  Law, Moral Development, Order

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• Free thought means fearless thought. It is not deterred by legal penalties, nor by spiritual consequences. Dissent from the Bible does not alarm the true investigator, who takes truth for authority not authority for truth. The thinker who is really free, is independent; he is under no dread; he yields to no menace; he is not dismayed by law, nor custom, nor pulpits, nor society-whose opinion appals so many. He who has the manly passion of free thought, has no fear of anything, save the fear of error.

  George Holyoake

  Spiritual, Passion, Mean

  George Jacob Holyoake (1896). “English Secularism: A Confession of Belief”, p.18, Library of Alexandria

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• I'm not on all the time. I like to have fun and be funny, but I'm much more of a thinker.

  Keenen Ivory Wayans

  Fun, Ivory, Comedy

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• Aristotle was by far a less able thinker than Plato ... he was completely overwhelmed by Plato.

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Plato, Able, Overwhelmed

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• There is little doubt that the majority of Mr. Mills supporters in 1865 did not know what his political opinions were, and that they voted for him simply on his reputation as a great thinker.

  Millicent Fawcett

  Political Opinions, Doubt, Littles

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• The sexiest people are thinkers.

  Vivienne Westwood

  Fashion, People, Sexiest

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• The greater part of mankind may be divided into two classes; that of shallow thinkers who fall short of the truth; and that of abstruse thinkers who go beyond it.

  David Hume

  Fall, Class, Two

  David Hume (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)”, p.735, Delphi Classics

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• The true Enlightenment thinker, the true rationalist, never wants to talk anyone into anything. No, he does not even want to convince; all the time he is aware that he may be wrong. Above all, he values the intellectual independence of others too highly to want to convince them in important matters. He would much rather invite contradiction, preferably in the form of rational and disciplined criticism. He seeks not to convince but to arouse - to challenge others to form free opinions.

  Karl Popper

  Free Opinion, Challenges, Intellectual

  "On Freedom (All Life is Problem Solving)". Essay by Karl Popper, translated by Patrick Camiller, 1994.

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• Correct thinkers think that 'baseball trivia' is an oxymoron: nothing about baseball is trivial.

  George Will

  Baseball, Thinking, Trivia

  George F. Will (1999). “Bunts”, p.132, Simon and Schuster

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• Ancient metaphysics underwent many changes at the hands of medieval thinkers who brought it in line with the dominant religious and theological movements of their day.

  Wilhelm Dilthey

  Religious, Hands, Movement

  Wilhelm Dilthey, Rudolf A. Makkreel, Frithjof Rodi (1991). “Introduction to the Human Sciences”, p.59, Princeton University Press

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• I have observed that male writers tend to get asked what they think and women what they feel," she says. "In my experience, and that of a lot of other women writers, all of the questions coming at them from interviewers tend to be about how lucky they are to be where they are – about luck and identity and how the idea struck them. The interviews much more seldom engage with the woman as a serious thinker, a philosopher, as a person with preoccupations that are going to sustain them for their lifetime.

  Eleanor Catton

  Thinking, Ideas, Luck

  "Eleanor Catton: 'Male writers get asked what they think, women what they feel'". Interview with Charlotte Higgins, October 16, 2013.

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• Most political journalists come to Washington because they're snappy writers, big thinkers, or news breakers. Me? My ticket to the big leagues had little to do with talent. It was mostly about the governor I was covering, Bill Clinton.

  Ron Fournier

  League, Political, Covering

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• The underlying assumption that human nature is basically the same at all times, everywhere, and obeys eternal laws beyond human control, is a conception that only a handful of bold thinkers have dared to question.

  Isaiah Berlin

  Law, Assumption, Human Nature

  Isaiah Berlin (2013). “The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas”, p.71, Princeton University Press

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• Atheists tend to read only each other’s books and not the work of the religious thinkers they are supposedly refuting.

  Edward Feser

  Religious, Atheist, Book

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• I am a very linear thinker, so I write beginning to end. I write hundreds of pages per book that never make it into print

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  Book, Writing, Pages

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• I think that my work is easy to understand because I am not a thinker, I am not a... How can I put it? I write the way I perceive, I guess.

  Sharon Olds

  Writing, Thinking, Way

  Interview with Dwight Garner for Salon Magazine, www.english.illinois.edu. July 1, 1996.

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• The Warrior listens to the words of certain thinkers.

  Paulo Coelho

  Life, Inspiration, Warrior

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• Thinkers perish, thoughts don't.

  Malcolm Forbes

  Science, Thinking

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• I've posed nude for a photographer in the manner of Rodin's Thinker, but I merely looked constipated.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Rodin, Photographer

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• Since the time of St. Jerome, it was mandatory for any kind of scholar or thinker to spend time out in the desert in solitude. It's no coincidence that the desert has been a major part of the visionary or mystical experience from the beginning of time.

  Bill Viola

  Wisdom, Mystical Experiences, Solitude

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• Without absolutes revealed from without by God Himself, we are left rudderless in a sea of conflicting ideas about manners, justice and right and wrong, issuing from a multitude of self-opinionated thinkers.

  John Owen

  Self, Sea, Ideas

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• The thinker makes a great mistake when he asks after cause and effect. They both together make up the indivisible phenomenon.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Philosophy, Mistake

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2015). “Maxims and Reflections”, p.139, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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• Kropp on the other hand is a thinker. He proposes that a declaration of war should be a kind of popular festival with entrance-tickets and bands, like a bull fight. Then in the arena the ministers and generals of the two countries, dressed in bathing-drawers and armed with clubs, can have it out on themselves. Whoever survives the country wins. That would be much simpler and more than just this arrangement, where the wrong people do the fighting

  Erich Maria Remarque

  Country, War, Fighting

  Erich Maria Remarque (2013). “All Quiet on the Western Front: A Novel”, p.32, Random House

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• Avoid the precepts of those thinkers whose reasoning is not confirmed by experience.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Experience, Reasoning

  Leonardo da Vinci (2014). “Delphi Complete Works of Leonardo da Vinci (Illustrated)”, p.969, Delphi Classics

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