Thinker Quotes - Page 24

• The effective thinker treats arrogance as the major sin of thinking.

  Edward de Bono

  Thinking, Arrogance, Sin

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• We who don't want radical Islam to spread must compete with the agents of radical Islam. I want to see what would happen if Christians, feminists and Enlightenment thinkers were to start proselytizing in the Muslim community.

  Ayaan Hirsi Ali

  Christian, Feminist, Community

  "The Feminist". Interview with Deborah Solomon, www.nytimes.com. May 21, 2010.

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• I'll co-host TODAY from Los Angeles Saturday morning and then make my way up to Merced for that evening's graduation ceremony.
  
  I'm still touching up my remarks, but my challenge to the Class of 2010 will be to break through the deafening and too often negative echo chamber of the digital era and become critical and independent thinkers.

  Lester Holt

  Morning, Independent, Echoes

  "Lester Holt: Fulfilling a promise to Class of 2010" by Steve Veres, www.today.com. May 15, 2010.

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• Comedians are thinkers. The best ones are akin to philosophers, in my opinion.

  Ted Alexandro

  Comedian, Opinion, Philosopher

  "Laughing at something is a form of accepting it, or at least making peace with it". Interview with Chris Cobb, logger.believermag.com. September 19, 2014.

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• In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Thinking, Men, Degenerates

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.175

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• I wouldn't say I was a born writer; I'm a born thinker.

  John Lennon

  Born

  "The Beatles Anthology" by The Beatles, (p. 9), 2000.

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• I'm not a writer because I want to make money. I'm a writer because I'm a very slow thinker, but I do care about thinking, and the only way I know how to think with any kind of finesse is by telling stories.

  Gregory Maguire

  Thinking, Stories, Care

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• Men of learning are those who have read the contents of books. Thinkers, geniuses, and those who have enlightened the world and furthered the race of men, are those who have made direct use
  of the book of the world.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Book, Men, Race

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2015). “Essays of Schopenhauer”, p.83, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• Many centuries ago, Oriental thinkers recognized that the mind is a constant mover and that it is next to impossible to stop it altogether. But one can learn to manage it by skillful use of the handle of control. They compared the mind to a jumping monkey. To intensify the image, they added that the monkey was maddened; then someone got him drunk; and finally, a scorpion bit him.

  Ervin Seale

  Jumping, Drunk, Mind

  ERVIN SEALE (1971). “TAKE OFF FROM WITHIN”

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• Negative thinkers always have a negative vision.

  Zig Ziglar

  Vision, Negative

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• He will long be remembered as one of the great Christian thinkers of our century, with a childlike faith and a profound compassion toward others. It can rarely be said of an individual that his life touched many others and affected them for the better; it will be said of Francis Schaeffer that his life touched millions of souls and brought them to the truth of their creator.

  Ronald Reagan

  Christian, Compassion, Long

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• Unlike earlier thinkers, who had sought to improve their accuracy by getting rid of error, Laplace realized that you should try to get more error: aggregate enough flawed data, and you get a glimpse of the truth. "The genius of statistics, as Laplace defined it, was that it did not ignore errors; it quantified them," the writer Louis Menand observed. "...The right answer is, in a sense, a function of the mistakes.

  Kathryn Schulz

  Mistake, Errors, Data

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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 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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• 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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• I think that if you're a digital thinker, you can use a digital camera.

  Abbas Kiarostami

  Thinking, Cameras, Use

  Interview with Geoff Andrew, www.theguardian.com. April 28, 2005.

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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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