quotations about thought
The history of human thought recalls the swinging of a pendulum which takes centuries to swing. After a long period of slumber comes a moment of awakening. Then thought frees herself from the chains with which those interested -- rulers, lawyers, clerics -- have carefully enwound her. She shatters the chains. She subjects to severe criticism all that has been taught her, and lays bare the emptiness of the religious political, legal, and social prejudices amid which she has vegetated. She starts research in new paths, enriches our knowledge with new discoveries, creates new sciences.
PETER KROPOTKIN
Notice: Undefined variable: id in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/t/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 37
Anarchist Morality
Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose,
Flushing his brow, and in his pained heart
Made purple riot.
JOHN KEATS
"The Eve of Saint Agnes"
If we were all on trial for our thoughts, we would all be hanged.
MARGARET ATWOOD
Alias Grace
Call one thought, and another will follow.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
My thoughts are my company; I can bring them together, select them, detain them, dismiss them.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Imaginary Conversations
A thought embodied and embraced in fit words walks the earth a living being.
E. P. WHIPPLE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Thought is challenged only by thought.
KHALED AL-FAISAL
Arab News, May 15, 2017
The wise man hath his thoughts in his head; the fool, on his tongue.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
Second thoughts are the adopted children of experience.
ELIZA COOK
"Diamond Dust", Eliza Cook's Journal, Volume 3
People can live very simple lives, can't they? Tucked away, without thinking. I think the world is what you enter when you think--when you become educated, when you question--because you can be in the big world and be utterly provincial.
V. S. NAIPAUL
The Paris Review, fall 1998
Cut off, or cut free, from speech, thought assumes its baroque writerly structures. Speech in a language of which he knows only a few words involves the conscious, patient, awkward, hilarious, and typically unsuccessful translation of thought. This process illuminates the gulf between thought and speech, which is not quite identical to the gulf between inside and outside.
MICHAEL W. CLUNE
"Thought Against Life: Cyrus Console's 'Romanian Notebook'", L.A. Review of Books, May 21, 2017
A word devoid of thought is a dead thing, and a thought unembodied in words remains a shadow.
LEV S. VYGOTSKY
Thought and Language
A fickle goddess Thought at times--
Try ne'er so hard we catch her not.
We try to think: 'tis all in vain--
Imprisoned never is a thought.
Like lightning flashing through the clouds,
It comes--a light, and then is gone,
A star which falls adown through space,
Again it comes as morning dawn.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
"What is Thought?"
With curious art the brain, too finely wrought,
Preys on herself, and is destroyed by thought.
CHARLES CHURCHILL
Epistle to William Hogarth
To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Walden
Thought and action should be one.
GEBHARD LEBRECHT VON BLUCHER
attributed, Day's Collacon
The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation, but you thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking.
ECKHART TOLLE
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
Ideas are the seeds of thought, but they do not produce flowers unless the soil where they are sown is fertile.
LADY BLESSINGTON
attributed, Day's Collacon
Great thoughts come from the heart.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES
Reflections and Maxims
Unlike a fountain that circulates the same water in an enclosed, perpetually recycling system, a human being circulates thoughts in an unlimited reservoir of self.
VERA NAZARIAN
The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration