Thinker Quotes - Page 23

• In choosing not to be a beast, I discovered my humanity. I became autodidactic, self-educated - a critical thinker.

  Stanley Williams

  Self, Humanity, Beast

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• From my student days I found him a compelling and fascinating, though often puzzling, figure. It's a lifelong fascination now and I don't expect that to stop! His vision of God, God's faithfulness, God's purposes and so on is so much bigger and richer than almost any subsequent Christian thinker has ever managed. In addition, I have always loved ancient history, especially the history of the early Roman empire, and of course Paul fits right into that.

  N. T. Wright

  Christian, Vision, God's Faithfulness

  Source: kenwytsma.com

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• Anatoli Tarasov, the guy that created the Soviet style of play, was a visionary. He was a creative thinker. He studied ballet and chess and art and read a lot.

  Gabe Polsky

  Art, Play, Creative

  Source: collider.com

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• I consider Paine our greatest political thinker. As we have not advanced, and perhaps never shall advance, beyond the Declaration and Constitution, so Paine has had no successors who extended his principles.

  Thomas A. Edison

  Political, Principles, Constitution

  "The Philosophy of Paine" by Thomas A. Edison, June 7, 1925.

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• Considering yourself selflessly selfish is a principle of all great thinkers

  Phil Collins

  Selfish, Principles, Considering

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• I'll bet every great thinker and leader we've got
  Could see all kinds of things other people could not!
  So then why get upset if somebody like me
  Tries to look at the world just a bit differently?

  Al Yankovic

  People, Leader, Upset

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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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• The vertical thinker says: 'I know what I am looking for.' The lateral thinker says: 'I am looking but I won't know what I am looking for until I have found it.'

  Edward de Bono

  Found, Knows, Vertical

  Edward de Bono (2009). “Lateral Thinking: A Textbook of Creativity”, p.37, Penguin UK

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• I want it so that every minister will be not a parrot, not an owl sitting upon a dead limb of the tree of knowledge and hooting the hoots that have been hooted for eighteen hundred years. But I want it so that each one can be an investigator, a thinker; and I want to make his congregation grand enough so that they will not only allow him to think, but will demand that he shall think, and give to them the honest truth of his thought.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Thinking, Years, Giving

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• One who loves must learn fear. One who fears must learn love. The thinker must do. The doer must think. The pacifist must fight, the fighter must find peace. If you flow as a river, burn as a fire. If you burn as a furnace, flow as a river. If you fly as a bird, sit firm as a rock. If you sit firmly, then fly as a bird. Be a fire that flows. A rock that flies. Love with fear and fear with love. For we are not fire, not water, not air, not rocks, not thoughts, not deeds, not fear, not love. We are G-dly beings.

  Menachem Mendel Schneerson

  Fighting, Thinking, Fire

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• Popular women use positive, optimistic language in their online profiles, not buzzwords like "future thinker". Here are the ten most often used words I found: easy-going, love, laugh, laid-back, optimistic, outgoing, fun, down-to-earth, pleasure, adventure.

  Amy Webb

  Fun, Adventure, Optimistic

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• A different conception of society, very different from that which now prevails, is in process of formation. Under the name of Anarchy, a new interpretation of the past and present life of society arises, giving at the same time a forecast as regards its future, both conceived in the same spirit as the above-mentioned interpretation in natural sciences. Anarchy, therefore, appears as a constituent part of the new philosophy, and that is why Anarchists come in contact, on so many points, with the greatest thinkers and poets of the present day.

  Peter Kropotkin

  Philosophy, Past, Names

  "Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal". Lecture by Peter Kropotkin, translated by Harry Lyman Koopman, dwardmac.pitzer.edu. 1898.

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• Herbert Spencer is little read now. Philosophers do not regard him as a major thinker. Social Darwinism has long been in disrepute.

  Peter Singer

  Long, Littles, Philosopher

  Peter Singer (2011). “The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress”, p.61, Princeton University Press

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• Continental thinkers have been obsessed with bourgeois man as representing the worst and most contemptible failure of modernity, which must at all costs be overcome. Nihilism in its most palpable sense means that the bourgeois has won, that the future, all foreseeable futures, belong to him, that all heights above him and all depths beneath him are illusory and that life is not worth living on these terms.

  Allan Bloom

  Mean, Men, Nihilism

  "The Closing of the American Mind". Book by Allan Bloom, pp. 157-158, 1987.

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• The ploughman knows how many acres he shall upturn from dawn to sunset: but the thinker knows not what a day may bring forth.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Sunset, May, Dawn

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

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• His [Turgot's] first important literary and scholastic effort was a treatise On the Existence of God. Few fragments of it remain, but we are helped to understand him when we learn that he asserted, and to the end of his life maintained, his belief in an Almighty Creator and Upholder of the Universe. It did, indeed, at a later period suit the purposes of his enemies, exasperated by his tolerant spirit and his reforming plans, to proclaim him an atheist; but that sort of charge has been the commonest of missiles against troublesome thinkers in all times.

  Andrew Dickson White

  Atheist, Effort, Enemy

  "Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason". Book by Andrew Dickson White, pp. 167-168, 1915.

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• Independent thinkers are usually geniuses or idiots and at times it's hard to tell which.

  James Cook

  Independent, Genius, Idiot

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• Audiences of critical thinkers are my favorite kinds of audiences. There are jokes I tell in the show that don't get laughs unless I am in front of an audience of critical thinkers. Put me in front of a crowd of science teachers or astronauts! The guileless aren't our audience - it's the critical thinkers we love.

  Adam Savage

  Teacher, Laughing, Crowds

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• I'm a thinker not a talker.

  David Bowie

  Talkers

  Song: Conversation Piece

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• Philosophers talk about truth and falsehood. People in life talk about payoff, exposure, and consequences (risks and rewards), hence fragility and antifragility. And sometimes philosophers and thinkers and those who study conflate Truth with risks and rewards.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  People, Risk, Fragility

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2016). “Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness The Black Swan The Bed of Procrustes Antifragile”, p.347, Random House

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• I don't believe that we are what we do although many thinkers argue otherwise. I believe that what we do is, very often, a poor approximation of what we are -- an imperfect manifestation of a much better totality. Even the best of us sometimes bite off, as it were, less than we can chew.

  Donald Barthelme

  Believe, Arguing, Action

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• Only in the Roman Empire and in Spain under Arab domination has culture been a potent factor. Under the Arab, the standard attained was wholly admirable; to Spain flocked the greatest scientists, thinkers, astronomers, and mathematicians of the world, and side by side there flourished a spirit of sweet human tolerance and a sense of purist chivalry. Then with the advent of Christianity, came the barbarians.

  Adolf Hitler

  Sweet, Tolerance, World

  "Hitler's secret Conversations". Book by H R Trevor-Roper, p. 542, 1953.

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• From Gadamer I learned that to understand a given thinker requires one to presuppose that he is right.

  Hans-Georg Gadamer

  Given

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• Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover will prove. And if the Thinker thinks passionately enough, the Prover will prove the thought so conclusively that you will never talk a person out of such a belief, even if it is something as remarkable as the notion that there is a gaseous vertebrate of astronomical heft ("GOD") who will spend all eternity torturing people who do not believe in his religion.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Believe, Thinking, People

  "Prometheus Rising" by Robert Anton Wilson, Ch. 1, (p. 28), 1983.

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• It is also naïve empiricism to provide, in support of some argument, series of eloquent confirmatory quotes by dead authorities. By searching, you can always find someone who made a well-sounding statement that confirms your point of view and, on every topic, it is possible to find another dead thinker who said the exact opposite.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Views, Opposites, Support

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2010). “The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly ImprobableFragility"”, p.32, Random House

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