Thinker Quotes - Page 28

• 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 do not believe in God. I'm an atheist. I consider myself a critical thinker, and it fascinates me that in the 21st century most people still believe in, as George Carlin puts it, 'the invisible man living in the sky'

  Seth MacFarlane

  Atheist, Believe, Men

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• There is a saying that no man has tasted the full flavour of life until he has known poverty, love and war. The justness of this reflection commends it to the lover of condensed philosophy. The three conditions embrace about all there is in life worth knowing. A surface thinker might deem that wealth should be added to the list. Not so. When a poor man finds a long-hidden quarter-dollar that has slipped through a rip into his vest lining, he sounds the pleasure of life with a deeper plummet than any millionaire can hope to cast.

  O. Henry

  Philosophy, War, Rip

  O. Henry (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry (Illustrated)”, p.621, Delphi Classics

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• Men saw the stars at the edge of the sea They thought great thoughts about liberty Poets wrote down words that did fit Writers wrote books Thinkers thought about it.

  Van Morrison

  Stars, Book, Men

  Song: Take It Where You Find It, Album: Wavelength

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• In early times, the great majority of the male sex were slaves, as well as the whole of the female. And many ages elapsed, some of them ages of high cultivation, before any thinker was bold enough to question the rightfulness, and the absolute social necessity, either of the one slavery or of the other.

  John Stuart Mill

  Sex, Age, Slavery

  John Stuart Mill (2016). “The Subjection of Women: Mill's Works”, p.5, VM eBooks

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• Anarchy is a word that comes from the Greek, and signifies, strictly speaking, "without government": the state of a people without any constituted authority. Before such an organization had begun to be considered possible and desirable by a whole class of thinkers, so as to be taken as the aim of a movement (which has now become one of the most important factors in modern social warfare), the word "anarchy" was used universally in the sense of disorder and confusion, and it is still adopted in that sense by the ignorant and by adversaries interested in distorting the truth.

  Errico Malatesta

  Taken, Class, Organization

  "Anarchy". Pamphlet by Errico Malatesta, www.marxists.org. 1891.

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• It was from America that the plain ideas that men ought to mind their business, and that the nation is responsible to Heaven for the acts of the State, - ideas long locked in the breast of solitary thinkers, and hidden among Latin folios, - burst forth like a conqueror upon the world they were destined to transform, under the title of the Rights of Man... and the principle gained ground, that a nation can never abandon its fate to an authority it cannot control.

  Lord Acton

  Latin, Fate, Men

  "The History of Freedom in Antiquity". Lord Acton's opening statement of his speech on February 28, 1877; later quoted in "The History of Freedom and Other Essays" edited by John Neville Figgis and Reginald Vere Laurence, 1907.

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• These inventors were elevating the formulation of entrepreneurial ideas to the status of a visionary activity. Though forced to justify their efforts in the pragmatic language of venture capital, they were at heart utopian thinkers intent on transforming the world.

  Alain de Botton

  Heart, Ideas, Effort

  "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work". Book by Alain de Botton, 2009.

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• The bourgeois thinkers of the eighteenth century thus turned Aristotle's formula on its head: satisfactions which the Greek philosopher had identified with leisure were now transposed to the sphere of work, while tasks lacking in any financial reward were drained of all significance and left to the haphazard attentions of decadent dilettantes. It now seemed as impossible that one could be happy and unproductive as it had once seemed unlikely that one could work and be human.

  Alain de Botton

  Greek, Rewards, Leisure

  "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work". Book by Alain de Botton, 2008.

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• Except in the rare cases of great dynamic thinkers whose thoughts are as turning-points in the history of our race, it is by Style that writers gain distinction, by Style they secure their immortality.

  George Henry Lewes

  Race, Style, Gains

  George Henry Lewes (1891). “The Principles of Success in Literature”

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• Since Khomeini's death, the popular appeal of an Islamic state - and of fundamentalism - has surely dimmed. Thinkers still debate and warriors kill, but no country seems prepared to emulate Iran. Perhaps revolutions happen only under majestic leaders, and no one like Khomeini has since appeared.

  Ruhollah Khomeini

  Country, Islamic, Warrior

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• Information is key to raising awareness of what our brain withholds from our conscious mind. Unfortunately we are hardwired emotion-driven thinkers. It takes effort and training to exercise introspection and mindfulness.

  David Bloor

  Exercise, Keys, Effort

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• The host of men who stand between a great thinker and the average man are not automatic transmitters. They work on the ideas; perhaps that is why a genius usually hates his disciples.

  Walter Lippmann

  Hate, Men, Average

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• After Bruno's death, during the first half of the seventeenth century, Descartes seemed about to take the leadership of human thought... in promoting an evolution doctrine as regards the mechanical formation of the solar system... but his constant dread of persecution, both from Catholics and Protestants, led him steadily to veil his thoughts and even to suppress them. ...Since Roger Bacon, perhaps, no great thinker had been so completely abased and thwarted by theological oppression.

  Andrew Dickson White

  Catholic, Veils, Half

  "A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom". Book by Andrew Dickson White, Vol.1, Ch.1: The Visible Universe, p. 57, 1896.

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• Just as the line of astronomical thinkers from Copernicus to Newton had destroyed the old astronomy, in which the earth was the center, and the Almighty sitting above the firmament the agent in moving the heavenly bodies about it with his own hands, so now a race of biological thinkers had destroyed the old idea of a Creator minutely contriving and fashioning all animals to suit the needs and purposes of man.

  Andrew Dickson White

  Moving, Animal, Men

  Andrew Dickson White (2012). “A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom: From Creation to the Victory of Scientific and Literary Methods”, p.49, Transaction Publishers

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• It is only the inferior thinker who hastens to explain the singular and the complex by the primitive shortcut of supernaturalism.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Shortcuts, Primitive, Complexes

  H. P. Lovecraft (2016). “H. P. LOVECRAFT äóñ The Ultimate Horror Collection: 60 Occult & Supernatural Mysteries in One Volume: The Greatest Spine-Chilling and Blood-Curdling Stories of Terror & Macabre: The Call of Cthulhu, The White Ship, The Dunwich Horror, At The Mountains Of Madness, The Whisperer in Darknessäó_”, p.106, e-artnow

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• Creatures extremely low in the intellectual scale may have conception. All that is required is that they should recognize the same experience again. A polyp would be a conceptual thinker if a feeling of 'Hello! thingumbob again!' ever flitted through its mind.

  William James

  Feelings, Intellectual, Mind

  William James (1955). “The principles of psychology”

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• Kierkegaard was by far the most profound thinker of the last century. Kierkegaard was a saint.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Profound, Saint, Lasts

  "Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard on the ethico-religious". Ideas in History, Vol. 1, 2006.

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• The Logos was both that which thought, and the thing which it thought: thinker and thought together. The universe, then, is thinker and thought, and since we are part of it, we as humans are, in the final analysis, thoughts of and thinkers of those thoughts.

  Philip K. Dick

  Together, Finals, Analysis

  Philip K. Dick (1985). “I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon”, Doubleday Books

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• Profound minds are the most likely to think lightly of the resources of human reason, and it is the superficial thinker who is generally strongest in every kind of unbelief.

  Humphry Davy

  Thinking, Profound, Mind

  Sir Humphry Davy, J. D., John DAVY (M.D., F.R.S.) (1851). “Salmonia: or, Days of fly fishing ... By an Angler i.e. Sir Humphry Davy . Third edition. With plates”, p.168

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• Is there any man that thinks in chains like the man who calls himself a free-thinker? Is there any man so credulous as the man who will not believe in the Bible? He swallows a ton of difficulties, and yet complains that we have swallowed an ounce of them. He has much more need of faith of a certain sort than we have, for skepticism has far harder problems than faith.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Believe, Men, Thinking

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• Not surprisingly, thinkers from groups for whom whiteness was and is a problem have taken the lead in studying whiteness in this way. Such study began with slave folktales and American Indian stories of contact with whites.

  David Roediger

  Taken, Groups, Stories

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• There are so many ways to help, by either sharing your skills or expertise, joining our board of directors or advisory boards, and donating. Regardless of what or how you share with ISF, we recognize that we don't have all the answers, and that solutions lie not in commonality but in diversity. Welcoming a broad range of thinkers, creators, and doers is what makes this organization thrive.

  Ian Somerhalder

  Lying, Skills, Organization

  Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• This famous quote hangs over my desk, as well as the desks of many people with the hubris and optimism to believe they can change the world for the better. It seems implausible, yet time and again history has proven it true. Virtually every major shift in cultural history can trace its origins to the work of a small group, often gathered around an innovative thinker or body of thought.

  Alan AtKisson

  Believe, People, Optimism

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