Great Thinkers Quotes - Page 2

• The books which help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is by easy reading; every man that tries it finds it so. But a great book that comes from a great thinker, — it is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth, with beauty too.

  Theodore Parker

  Book, Thinking, Make You Think

  "The Collected Works of Theodore Parker: Lessons from the world of matter and the world of man".

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• There are those, of course, who deny that they need any form of authority. They are the popular atheists and agnostics. Such men say that they must be shown by 'reason' whatever they are to accept as true. But the great thinkers among non-Christian men have taken no such position. They know that they cannot cover the whole area of reality with their knowledge.

  Cornelius Van Til

  Christian, Atheist, Taken

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• There's nothing like the discovery of an unknown work by a great thinker to set the intellectual community atwitter and cause academics to dart about like those things one sees when looking at a drop of water under a microscope.

  Woody Allen

  Discovery, Water, Community

  Woody Allen (2007). “Mere Anarchy”, Random House Incorporated

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• What I notice about people who are gifted in filmmaking is that they're great thinkers. They engage with big ideas and they engage with people.

  Ben Whishaw

  Ideas, People, Bigs

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

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• James Lovelock is one of the great thinkers of our time. His ideas and inventions have opened up new insights into our planet and the way it works, and the story behind them will appeal to a very wide audience. I am pleased to recommend this book.

  Chris Rapley

  Book, Ideas, Way

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• The small are always dependent on the great; they are "small" precisely because they think they are independent. The great thinker is one who can hear what is greatest in the work of other "greats" and who can transform it in an original manner.

  Martin Heidegger

  Independent, Thinking, Thinker

  Martin Heidegger (1979). “Nietzsche: The will to power as art”

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• So we recast the wisdom of the great thinkers in the shape of our illusions. They are shiny from their makeovers, they are fabulous and gorgeous, and they want us to know that we can have it all.

  Brian Morton

  Shapes, Want, Fabulous

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• Darwin paid particular attention to disconfirming evidence. Objectivity maintenance routines are totally required in life if you're going to be a great thinker.

  Charlie Munger

  Objectivity, Attention, Maintenance

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• The benevolence of wrapping the partridge in a vine leaf brings out its quality, just as the barrel of Diogenes brought forth the qualities of the great thinker.

  Emmanuel des Essarts

  Food, Cooking, Quality

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• It is doubtful whether our present system of popular education does not retard independent or self thinking as much as it promotes it. All genuine education is self-education. It will incite the individual to think for himself, by rethinking what the race's great thinkers have already thought for him, thus enabling him to go ahead under his own mental steam.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Independent, Thinking, Race

  Joseph Alexander Leighton (1919). “The field of philosophy: an outline of lectures on introduction to philosophy”

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• As to how I would guide someone who is confused about the idea of God, I would suggest that he or she begins identifying what one might called "philosophical friends," - people with whom one could seriously examine our thought about God through listening to each other, reading important and useful books together and trying to think for oneself while familiarizing oneself with the ideas of some of the world's great thinkers. Cultivate openness without gullibility and skepticism without cynicism.

  Jacob Needleman

  Confused, Book, Philosophical

  Source: www.watkinsmagazine.com

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• All great thinkers are initially ridiculed - and eventually revered.

  Robin Sharma

  Inspirational, Success, Powerful

  Twitter post from Oct 29, 2015

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• There is no violent surface indication of the ecstasy which great thinkers alone enjoy. There is nothing dramatic about it, but there is some subtle light in the eye of the inspired one, or some even more subtle quiet emanation which surrounds the inspired thinker, which tells you that you are in the presence of one who has bridged the gap which separates the mundane world from the world of spirit.

  Walter Russell

  Eye, Light, Secret

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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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• If only our great thinkers could learn to talk, and our great talkers could learn to think.

  Ashleigh Brilliant

  Thinking, Silence, Thinker

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• No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead.

  John Stuart Mill

  May, Firsts, Doe

  John Stuart Mill (2012). “On Liberty”, p.28, Courier Corporation

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• A philosophy professor at my college, whose baby became enamored of the portrait of David Hume on a Penguin paperback, had the cover laminated in plastic so her daughter could cut her teeth on the great thinker.

  Anne Fadiman

  Daughter, Baby, Philosophy

  Anne Fadiman (2011). “Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader”, p.41, Macmillan

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• But as I wrote the book [Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet], I tried to write it as clearly and directly and passionately as possible just thinking of communicating to readers who might want to learn about this great thinker and be inspired by him as I was.

  Jeffrey Rosen

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.slate.com

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• I just don't think we think about jurists as rock stars or great thinkers, particularly in the political world.

  Dahlia Lithwick

  Stars, Thinking, Rocks

  "What Would Brandeis Do?". "Amicus" with Dahlia Lithwick, www.slate.com. June 16, 2016.

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• People who are great thinkers, in science or in art, people who are great performers, have to have that kind of capacity. Without that kind of capacity, it's extremely difficult to manage a high level of performance because you're going to get a lot of extraneous material chipping away at the finery of your thinking or the finery of your motor execution.

  Antonio Damasio

  Art, Thinking, People

  Interview with David Hirschman, bigthink.com. August 10, 2010.

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• We learn that many great thinkers were convinced that the Bible contained the Ancient Mysteries, but not in the literal words—that the words on the pages were codes, and that the Bible is comprised of heavy-handed and useless story covering up something much more important and interesting. I get the feeling that [Dan Brown] is trying to tell me something, but I am not biting, reader.

  Maureen Johnson

  Interesting, Feelings, Important

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• There is little doubt that the majority of Mr. Mills supporters in 1865 did not know what his political opinions were, and that they voted for him simply on his reputation as a great thinker.

  Millicent Fawcett

  Political Opinions, Doubt, Littles

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• Christianity in the West, opens up a perspective of depth into what it means to be a self. And that depth of the self is something that is experienced in the sight of God. So that the great thinkers of self and subjectivity are Paul and Augustine. They look at the self from the perspective of God and they find themselves wretched and interesting. Constituted by conflictual desires.

  Simon Critchley

  Mean, Sight, Self

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• Every great thinker is someone else's moron.

  Umberto Eco

  Insult, Moron, Thinker

  Umberto Eco (2007). “Foucault's Pendulum”, p.76, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• For the individual, as I can testify, a brief grounding in semantics, besides making philosophy unreadable, makes unreadable most political speeches, classical economic theory, after-dinner oratory, diplomatic notes, newspaper editorials, treatises on pedagogics and education, expert financial comment, dissertations on money and credit, accounts of debates, and Great Thoughts from Great Thinkers in general. You would be surprised at the amount of time this saves.

  Stuart Chase

  Philosophy, Political, Speech

  Stuart Chase (2015). “Tyranny of Words”, p.15, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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