quotations about thought
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
Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought.
GRAHAM GREENE
The Spectator, April 18, 1981
Food for thought gives some folks indigestion.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
There is nothing worth thinking but it has been thought before; we must only try to think it again.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Our thoughts are like roots which reach out in every direction into the cosmic ocean of formless energy, and these thought-roots set in motion vibrations like themselves and attract the affinities of our desires and ambitions.
ORISON SWETT MARDEN
The Miracle of Right Thought
What you are thinking about, you are becoming.
MUHAMMAD ALI
Esquire, February 2012
Learning without thought is labor lost; and thought without learning is perilous.
CONFUCIUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Each flying thought, a flying thought pursues.
C. B. LANGSTON
"Thought"
The measure of greatness in a scientific idea is the extent to which it stimulates thought and opens up new lines of research.
PAUL ADRIAN MAURICE DIRAC
attributed, Cosmology of Lemaître
A new thought belongs to the world, and is no man's patent.
HERBERT TUTTLE
attributed, Day's Collacon
A penny for your thought.
JOHN LYLY
Euphues
Nothing is so fragile as thought in its infancy; an interruption breaks it: nothing is so powerful, even to overturning empires, when it reaches its maturity.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Large elements in order brought,
And tracts of calm from tempest made,
And world-wide fluctuation sway'd,
In vassal tides that follow'd thought.
ALFRED TENNYSON
In Memoriam A.H.H.
Thought obeys no natural law. In a stream of water, time works the way it usually does in nature -- the future passes into the present and then into the past. In thought, the past might pour into the present and then drain away into the future. Or the future might rain into the past as the present disappears. Thought is not like a natural thing. Thought is literally the essence of the artificial.
MICHAEL W. CLUNE
"Thought Against Life: Cyrus Console's 'Romanian Notebook'", L.A. Review of Books, May 21, 2017
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"
As but a swift glance is enough to catch the glory of a great landscape, or only a little lingering is necessary to observe many peculiar beauties in it, so but a brief turn of the mind to sublime thoughts will give us their light and power.
JAMES VILA BLAKE
Essays
If what we think now is different from what we thought then, we can take it for granted that what we think in a year will be different again.
DORIS LESSING
Shikasta
His high-erected thoughts look'd down upon
The smiling valley of his fruitful heart.
DANIEL WEBSTER
A Monumental Column
Orthodoxy is the Bourbon of the world of thought; it learns not, neither can it forget.
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews
Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, and mankind the vessel.
JULIUS CHARLES HARE
Guesses at Truth