Thinking Quotes - Page 38

• Oh youth, youth! You don't worry about anything; you seem to possess all the treasures of the universe--even sorrow gives you pleasure, even grief suits you.... And perhaps the whole secret of your charm lies not in your ability to do everything, but in your ability to think that you will do everything.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Lying, Grief, Suits You

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• I don't think Dr. King helped racial harmony, I think he helped racial justice. What I profess to do is help the oppressed and if I cause a load of discomfort in the white community and the black community, that in my opinion means I'm being effective, because I'm not trying to make them comfortable. The job of an activist is to make people tense and cause social change.

  Al Sharpton

  Jobs, Kings, Mean

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• I believe that there are human stocks with whom it is physically unwise to intermarry, but to think that these stocks are all colored or that there are no such white stocks is unscientific and false.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Believe, White, Humans

  W. E. B. Du Bois' statement of 1910, as quoted in Gregory Michael Dorr "Fighting Fire with Fire: African Americans and Hereditarian Thinking, 1900-1942" by Gregory Michael Dorr on Wake Forest University Homepage, March 13, 2006.

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• I am accustomed to think very long of going anywhere,--am slow to move. I hope to hear a response of the oracle first.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Travel, Moving, Long

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.205, Jazzybee Verlag

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• If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man,--and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages,--it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wise, Running, Real

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.21, Simon and Schuster

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• It sweetens every bit of work to think that I am doing it in humble, far-off, yet real imitation of Jesus.

  Elizabeth Prentiss

  Jesus, Real, Humble

  Elizabeth Prentiss (1870). “Stepping Heavenward”, p.73

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• What is this enigmatic impulse that does not allow one to settle down in the achieved, the finished? I think it is a quest for reality.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Reality, Quests, Doe

  Czeslaw Milosz's Nobel lecture, www.nobelprize.org. December 8, 1980.

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• It's true that what is morbid is highly valued today, and so you may think that I am only joking or that I've devised just one more means of praising Art with the help of irony.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Art, Mean, May

  Czeslaw Milosz (2017). “Selected and Last Poems 1931-2004”, p.126, Penguin UK

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• I think that I am here, on this earth, to present a report on it, but to whom I don't know. As if I were sent so that whatever takes place has meaning because it changes into memory.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Memories, Earth, Ifs

  "Consciousness" by Czeslaw Milosz, 1986.

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• The point of Buddhist meditation is not to stop thinking, for cultivation of insight clearly requires intelligent use of thought and discrimination. What needs to be stopped is conceptualisation that is compulsive, mechanical and unintelligent, that is, activity that is always fatiguing, usually pointless, and at times seriously harmful.

  B. Alan Wallace

  Buddhist, Intelligent, Meditation

  "Tibetan Buddhism from the Ground Up: A Practical Approach for Modern Life". Book by B. Alan Wallace, 1993.

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• People in Parliament occupy themselves with private animosities and petty quarrels, and think little of the national interest. It is impossible to credit the serene indifference with which they consider events outside their own country.

  William III of England

  Country, People, Events

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• A Man that wants Money thinks none can be unhappy that has it.

  Susanna Centlivre

  Men, Unhappy, Want

  Susanna Centlivre (1872). “Love's contrivance. Busy body. Marplot. Platonick lady. Perplex'd lovers. Cruel gift”, p.63

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• it is a curious fact, but one which all experience owns, that people do not desire so much to appear better, as to appear different from what they really are.

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon

  People, Desire, Different

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1852). “Romance and reality”, p.78

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• One would think that an unsuccessful volume was like a degree in the school of reviewing. One unread work makes the judge bitter enough; but a second failure, and he is quite desperate in his damnation. I do believe one half of the injustice - the severity of 'the ungentle craft' originates in its own want of success: they cannot forgive the popularity which has passed them over.

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon

  Believe, School, Judging

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1857). “The Complete Works of L. E. Landon ...”, p.34

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• Really, one of us ought to have the courage to call the experiment off and shoulder the responsibility for the decision, but the majority reckons that that kind of courage would be a sign of cowardice, and the first step in a retreat. They think it would mean an undignified surrender for mankind as if there was any dignity in floundering and drowning in what we don't understand and never will.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Mean, Responsibility, Decision

  "Solaris". Book by Stanisław Lem, translated by Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox. Chapter 11: "The Thinkers", p. 158, 1970.

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• I can't help thinking that science would be more appealing if it had no practical use.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Would Be, Use, Helping

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• Some Englishmen, of whom Kitchener was chief, believed that a rebellion of Arabs against Turks would enable England, while fighting Germany, simultaneously to defeat Turkey. Their knowledge of the nature and power and country of the Arabic-speaking peoples made them think that the issue of such a rebellion would be happy: and indicated its character and method. So they allowed it to begin.

  Edward Thomas

  Country, Character, Fighting

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• There are some places which, seen for the first time, yet seem to strike a chord of recollection. "I have been here before," we think to ourselves, "and this is one of my true homes." It is no mystery for those philosophers who hold that all which we shall see, with all which we have seen and are seeing, exists already in an eternal now; that all those places are home to us which in the pattern of our life are twisting, in past, present and future, tendrils of remembrance round our heart-strings.

  E. C. Bentley

  Heart, Home, Past

  "Trent's Own Case". Book by E. C. Bentley and H. Warner Allen, Chapter XV: "Eunice Makes a Clean Breast of It", 1936.

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• If ever I am a mother I will zealously strive against this crime of over- indulgence. I can hardly give it a milder name when I think of the evils it brings.

  Anne Bronte

  Mother, Names, Evil

  Anne Bronte (2009). “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall: Easyread Comfort Edition”, p.367, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• When we talk of architecture, people usually think of something static; this is wrong. What we are thinking of is an architecture similar to the dynamic and musical architecture achieved by the Futurist musician Pratella. Architecture is found in the movement of colours, of smoke from a chimney and in metallic structures, when they are expressed in states of mind which are violent and chaotic.

  Carlo Carra

  People, Musical, Mind

  "The Painting of Sounds, Noises and Smells" by Carlo Carra (1913), as translated in: Mary Ann Caws "Manifesto: A Century of Isms," p. 203, 2001.

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• We must not be guilty of taking the law into our own hands, and converting it from what it really is to what we think it ought to be.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Hands, Law, Guilty

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• Thinking is the great enemy of perfection. The habit of profound reflection, I am compelled to say, is the most pernicious of all the habits formed by civilized man.

  Constantine the Great

  Reflection, Men, Profound

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• If you can't think of an observation that could disprove a theory, that theory simply isn't scientific.

  Jerry A. Coyne

  Theory, Observation, Ifs

  Jerry A. Coyne (2009). “Why Evolution Is True”, p.148, Penguin

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• Evil to him who evil thinks.

  Edward III of England

  Evil

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations". Compiled by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt and Kate Louise Roberts, 1922.

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• I love the joy of mountains Wandering free with no concerns Every day I find food for this old body There's leisure for thinking, nothing to do Often I carry an ancient book Sometimes I climb a rock pavilion To look down a thousand foot precipice Overhead are swirling clouds A cold moon chilly cold My body feels like a flying crane

  Hanshan

  Book, Moon, Clouds

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