Thinker Quotes - Page 8

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  It is the artists of the world, the feelers and the thinkers who will ultimately save us; who can articulate, educate, defy, insist, sing and shout the big dreams.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Dream, Artist, World

  Leonard Bernstein (1982). “Findings”, Anchor

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• What makes a free thinker is not his beliefs, but the way in which he holds them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was young, or if he holds them because if he did not he would be unhappy, his thought is not free; but if he holds them because, after careful thought, he finds a balance in their favor, then his thought is free, however odd his conclusions may seem.

  Bertrand Russell

  Balance, Atheism, Unhappy

  Bertrand Russell (1944). “The Value of Free Thought: How to Become a Truth-seeker and Break the Chains of Mental Slavery”

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• I love to consider an Infidel, whether distinguished by the title of deist, atheist, or free-thinker, by three different lights, in his solitude, his afflictions, and his last moments.... [In these situations such people show themselves] in solitude, incapable or rapture or elevation, ... in distress, [with] a halter or a pistol the only refuge [they] can fly to, ... [and liable to conversion] at the approach of death.

  Richard Steele

  Atheist, Light, People

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• Bill Clinton was a very, very good speaker. But like many people who are great speakers and great thinkers and have a lot of energy and ambition, he talked too much.

  Robert Reich

  Ambition, People, Too Much

  "American Experience", www.pbs.org.

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• When watching men of power in action it must be always kept in mind that, whether they know it or not, their main purpose is the elimination or neutralization of the independent individual- the independent voter, consumer, worker, owner, thinker- and that every device they employ aims at turning men into a manipulable animated instrument which is Aristotle's definition of a slave.

  Eric Hoffer

  Independent, Men, Mind

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• The thinker philosophizes as the lover loves. Even were the consequences not only useless but harmful, he must obey his impulse.

  William James

  Useless, Lovers, Impulse

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• Everyone has a right to be interested in himself, and I am confident that God wants us to be interested in ourselves first; that is, the first soul that anyone should bring to God should be his own soul. We cannot do very much for anyone else until we have first done something for ourselves. That is, it is pretty difficult to give someone else an education unless we have some education ourselves. It is pretty hard to get someone else to think unless we ourselves are thinkers.

  Sterling W Sill

  Thinking, Giving, Soul

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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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• To many writers and thinkers, though not to all, another text is, or can be, the most naked and charged of life-forces ... The concept of allusion or analogue is totally inadequate. To Dante these other texts are the organic context of identity. They are as directly about life as life is about them.

  George Steiner

  Poetry, Identity, Naked

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• We use up words like 'spiritual' so fast in this culture. Twenty years ago spiritual had a distinct meaning. But now there's a lot of jack-off thinkers who just love to talk about the spiritual. And there is a lot of bogus - is bogosity a word? It should be - a lot of bogosity in these spiritual seekers. So you have to find another way to express it. I just call it 'how I fit'.

  George Carlin

  Spiritual, Years, Atheism

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com. March 1997.

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• Violence, contrary to popular belief, is not part of the anarchist philosophy. It has repeatedly been pointed out by anarchist thinkers that the revolution can neither be won, nor the anarchist society established and maintained, by armed violence.

  Vernon Richards

  Philosophy, Violence, Revolution

  Vernon Richards (1953). “Lessons of the Spanish Revolution, 1936-1939”

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• If H. P. Lovecraft and H. L. Mencken had ever collaborated, they might have come up with something like The Edge of Reason. This one will delight thinkers-and outrage true believers-of all stripes.

  George R. R. Martin

  Stripes, Delight, Might

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• Are you a thinker, a doer, or a clutch player? The better you are, the greater potential for influence you will have with your people.

  John C. Maxwell

  Player, People, Doers

  John C. Maxwell (2007). “The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader: Becoming the Person Others Will Want to Follow”, p.27, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• What makes revolutionary thought unique is its clarity and dignity, and its clear grasp of freedom and justice: simple, clear words that are understood without the need for any help from elite writers or thinkers.

  Nawal El Saadawi

  Unique, Simple, Justice

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• Even the most analytical thinkers are predictably irrational; the really smart ones acknowledge and address their irrationalities.

  Dan Ariely

  Smart, Addresses, Irrational

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• The university most worthy of rational admiration is that one in which your lonely thinker can feel himself lonely, most positively furthered, and most richly fed

  William James

  Lonely, Admiration, Feds

  William James (2012). “Memories and Studies”, p.178, The Floating Press

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• We may divide thinkers into those who think for themselves and those who think through others. The latter are the rule and the former the exception. The first are original thinkers in a double sense, and egotists in the noblest meaning of the word.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Thinking, May, Firsts

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• Positive Thinkers get positive results because they appreciate the inestimable value of a day, this day, not the next day, but this day, and every day. Today offers at least sixteen waking hours that may be crammed FULL of opportunity, joy, excitement, and achievement.

  Norman Vincent Peale

  Opportunity, Next Day, Appreciate

  Norman Vincent Peale (2015). “Why Some Positive Thinkers Get Powerful Results”, p.53, Open Road Media

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• Virtually all men of action incline to Fatality just as most thinkers incline to Providence.

  Honore de Balzac

  Men, Action, Providence

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• Coleridge cried; "O God, how glorious it is to live!" Renan asks, "O God, when will it be worth while to live?" In Nature we echo the poet; in the world we echo the thinker.

  Ouida

  Life, Echoes, World

  Ouida (1889). “Chandos. Randolph Gordon. Slander and sillery. Blue and yellow. Belles and blackcock. A line in the "Daily"”

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• In a democracy such as ours the leading minds seldom achieve a place of permanent influence. And the men who sit in Congress or even in the White House are usually not our leading minds. They are not the thinkers. Still less have they time for reflection.

  Pearl S. Buck

  Reflection, Men, White

  Pearl S. Buck (2013). “My Several Worlds: A Personal Record”, p.470, Open Road Media

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• God is the one great employer, thinker, planner, supervisor.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  God, Supervisors, Employers

  Henry Ward Beecher, Truman Jeremiah Ellinwood (1872). “The Original Plymouth Pulpit: Sermons of Henry Ward Beecher in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn”, p.83

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• George Orwell famously described international sport as 'war minus the shooting'. But for all Orwell's greatness as a thinker, this was one of his least felicitous lines, analogous to 'murder minus the death' or 'life minus the breathing'.

  Gideon Haigh

  Sports, War, Greatness

  Gideon Haigh (2010). “Sphere of Influence: Writings on Cricket and Its Discontents”, p.197, Victory Books

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• Brisk talkers are usually slow thinkers. There is, indeed, no wild beast more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate. If you are civil to the voluble they will abuse your patience; if brusque, your character.

  Jonathan Swift

  Character, Men, Talking

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• Brisk talkers are generally slow thinkers.

  Jonathan Swift

  Talking, Talkers

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