Inspirational Quotes on Thinking

“A man cannot think himself out of mental evil; for it is actually the organ of thought that has become diseased, ungovernable, and, as it were, independent. He can only be saved by will or faith. The moment his mere reason moves, it moves in the old circular rut; he will go round and round his logical circle.”

“Thus our dignity consists in thought. It is on thought that we must depend for our recovery, not on space and time, which we could never fill. Let us then strive to think well; that is basic principle of morality. (54)”

“Knowing and thinking exist for the sake of love -- for the sake of building people up in faith. Thinking that produces pride instead of love is not true thinking.”

“Thinking too little about things or thinking too much both make us obstinate and fanatical.”

“The scarcity of time is the reason we have to concentrate on one thing at a time.”

“I can certainly imagine a man without hands, feet, or head, for it is only experience that teaches us that the head is more necessary than the feet. But I cannot imagine a man without thought; he would be a stone or an animal.”

“The more you engage in good thinking, the more good thoughts you will continue to think. As playwright Victor Hugo asserted, "An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an invasion of ideas.”

“The author called us to re-examine assumptions bequeathed to us from Greece and Rome. Just as a bridge built by the Roman Empire might have held up tolerably for centuries under foot traffic but crumble under the weight of a modern truck, the author cautions that classical thinking had limits exposed by contemporary events and certainly exposed by the modern world.”

“A man might as well hope to fight a swarm of flies with a sword as to master his own thoughts when they are set on by the devil.”

“Now having travelled from the pride of man in the High Renaissance and the Enlightenment down to the present despair, we can understand where modern people are. They have no place for a personal God. But equally they have no place for man as man, or for love, or for freedom, or for significance. This brings a crucial problem. Beginning only from man himself, people affirm that man is only a machine. But those who hold this position cannot live like machines! If they could, there would be no tensions in their intellectual position or in their lives. But even people who believe they are machines cannot live like machines, and thus they must “leap upstairs” against their reason and try to find something which gives meaning to life, even though to do so they have to deny their reason. This was a solution Leonardo da Vinci and the men of the Renaissance never would have accepted, even if, like Leonardo they ended their thinking in despondency. They would not have done so, for they would have considered it intellectual suicide to separate meaning and values from reason this way. And they would have been right. Such a solution is intellectual suicide, and one may question the intellectual integrity of those who accept such a position when their starting point was pride in the sufficiency of human reason.”

“When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less.”

“Only by practicing and developing your thinking daily will your ideas get better. Your thinking ability is determined not by your desire to think, but by your past thinking.”

“Creativity is being able to see what everybody else has seen and think what nobody else has thought so you can do what nobody else has done.”

“Let us then strive to think well; that is basic principle of morality. (54)”

“Ideas have a short half-life: if you don't put them to action, they die off.”

“Sir Antony Jay said, "The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a creative mind to spot wrong questions." Wrong questions shut down the process of creative thinking. They direct thinkers down the same old path, or they chide them into believing that thinking isn't necessary at all.”

“That no matter how often someone says you can't do something, by simply working harder and trying, you can prove them wrong and actually change your circumstance. Change your thinking and it will change your life.”

“Pardon me also, and deal mercifully with me, as often as I think of anything besides You in prayer. For I confess truly that I am accustomed to be very much distracted. Very often I am not where bodily I stand or sit; rather, I am where my thoughts carry me. Where my thoughts are, there am I; and frequently my thoughts are where my love is. That which naturally delights, or is by habit pleasing, comes to me quickly. Hence You Who are Truth itself, have plainly said: 'For where your treasure is, there is your heart also.' If I love heaven, I think willingly of heavenly things. If I love the world, I rejoice at the happiness of the world and grieve at its troubles. If I love the flesh, I often imagine things that are carnal. If I love the spirit, I delight in thinking of spiritual matters. For whatever I love, I am willing to speak and hear about.”

“El hombre desea a toda costa conservar sus quiméricos ensueños, su rastrera sandez, con el solo fin de afirmarse a sí mismo (como si fuera muy necesario) que los hombres son hombres y no pianos, que obedecen las leyes de la Naturaleza.”

“When you hear someone say, "Now this is just off the top of my head," expect dandruff. The only people who believe thinking is easy are those who don't habitually engage in it.”