Thinker Quotes - Page 4

• Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Religious, Atheist, Fear

  "The New York Times", December 3, 1978.

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• There are a lot of clear thinkers everywhere.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Clear

  Interview With Joseph Pearce, www.catholiceducation.org. February, 2003.

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• To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Pain, Joy, Enlightenment

  Eckhart Tolle (2010). “The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment”, p.154, New World Library

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• I think of myself as an engineer, not as a visionary or 'big thinker.' I don't have any lofty goals.

  Linus Torvalds

  Thinking, Goal, Visionaries

  "The Peacemaker" by David Diamond, www.wired.com. July 01, 2003.

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• I'm a very good thinker, but I sometimes grab the wrong word. I say something I didn't think through adequately. I mean, I don't type my speeches, then sit up there and read them off the teleprompter, you know. I wing it.

  Ted Turner

  Mean, Thinking, Wings

  "Ted's tears". Interview with Oliver Burkeman, www.theguardian.com. June 18, 2002.

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• I believe that pity is a law like justice, and that kindness is a duty like uprightness. That which is weak has a right to the kindness and pity of that which is strong. In the relations of man with the animals...there is a great ethic, scarcely perceived as yet, which will at length break through into the light, and which will be the corollary and the complement to humans ethics. Are there not here unsounded depths for the thinker? Is one to think oneself mad because one has the sentiment of universal pity in one's heart?

  Victor Hugo

  Strong, Kindness, Believe

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• And when you look at the twentieth-century experiment with collectivism-that Ayn Rand, more than anybody else, did such a good job of articulating the pitfalls of statism and collectivism-you can't find another thinker or writer who did a better job of describing and laying out the moral case for capitalism than Ayn Rand.

  Paul Ryan

  Jobs, Pitfalls, Looks

  "Paul Ryan and Ayn Rand's ideas: in the hot seat again". Speech at a 2005 Atlas Society event, atlassociety.org. April 30, 2012.

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• Bottom up thinkers try to start from experience and move from experience to understanding. They don't start with certain general principles they think beforehand are likely to be true; they just hope to find out what reality is like.

  John Polkinghorne

  Moving, Reality, Thinking

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• Others indeed may talk, and write, and fight about liberty, and make an outward pretence to it but the free-thinker alone is truly free.

  George Berkeley

  Writing, Fighting, Liberty

  George Berkeley (1871). “The Works of George Berkeley: Philosophical works”, p.37

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• I think that my work is easy to understand because I am not a thinker, I am not a... How can I put it? I write the way I perceive, I guess.

  Sharon Olds

  Writing, Thinking, Way

  Interview with Dwight Garner for Salon Magazine, www.english.illinois.edu. July 1, 1996.

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• I am a very linear thinker, so I write beginning to end. I write hundreds of pages per book that never make it into print

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  Book, Writing, Pages

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• I have observed that male writers tend to get asked what they think and women what they feel," she says. "In my experience, and that of a lot of other women writers, all of the questions coming at them from interviewers tend to be about how lucky they are to be where they are – about luck and identity and how the idea struck them. The interviews much more seldom engage with the woman as a serious thinker, a philosopher, as a person with preoccupations that are going to sustain them for their lifetime.

  Eleanor Catton

  Thinking, Ideas, Luck

  "Eleanor Catton: 'Male writers get asked what they think, women what they feel'". Interview with Charlotte Higgins, October 16, 2013.

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• The true Enlightenment thinker, the true rationalist, never wants to talk anyone into anything. No, he does not even want to convince; all the time he is aware that he may be wrong. Above all, he values the intellectual independence of others too highly to want to convince them in important matters. He would much rather invite contradiction, preferably in the form of rational and disciplined criticism. He seeks not to convince but to arouse - to challenge others to form free opinions.

  Karl Popper

  Free Opinion, Challenges, Intellectual

  "On Freedom (All Life is Problem Solving)". Essay by Karl Popper, translated by Patrick Camiller, 1994.

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• Since the time of St. Jerome, it was mandatory for any kind of scholar or thinker to spend time out in the desert in solitude. It's no coincidence that the desert has been a major part of the visionary or mystical experience from the beginning of time.

  Bill Viola

  Wisdom, Mystical Experiences, Solitude

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• Many a serious thinker has been produced in prisons, where we have nothing to do but think.

  Robert Greene

  Thinking, Serious, Prison

  Twitter post from Sep 26, 2014

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• It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect.

  Hermann Hesse

  Life, Hate, Hippie

  Hermann Hesse (2015). “Siddhartha: An Indian Tale”, p.110, Om Books International

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• Here is the point about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically. We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true - that religion has caused innumerate people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Believe, Awards, Eyebrows

  "God Is Not Great" by Christopher Hitchens, www.slate.com. April 25, 2007.

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• My weakness has always been to prefer the large intention of an unskilful artist to the trivial intention of an accomplished one: in other words, I am more interested in the high ideas of a feeble executant than in the high execution of a feeble thinker.

  Thomas Hardy

  Writing, Artist, Ideas

  Thomas Hardy (2007). “Thomas Hardy”, p.319, Wordsworth Editions

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• Individual heterosexual women came to the movement from relationships where men were cruel, unkind, violent, unfaithful. Many of these men were radical thinkers who participated in movements for social justice, speaking out on behalf of the workers, the poor, speaking out on behalf of racial justice. However when it came to the issue of gender they were as sexist as their conservative cohorts.

  Bell Hooks

  Men, Issues, Justice

  bell hooks (2014). “Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics”, p.67, Routledge

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• Correct thinkers think that 'baseball trivia' is an oxymoron: nothing about baseball is trivial.

  George Will

  Baseball, Thinking, Trivia

  George F. Will (1999). “Bunts”, p.132, Simon and Schuster

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• Kropp on the other hand is a thinker. He proposes that a declaration of war should be a kind of popular festival with entrance-tickets and bands, like a bull fight. Then in the arena the ministers and generals of the two countries, dressed in bathing-drawers and armed with clubs, can have it out on themselves. Whoever survives the country wins. That would be much simpler and more than just this arrangement, where the wrong people do the fighting

  Erich Maria Remarque

  Country, War, Fighting

  Erich Maria Remarque (2013). “All Quiet on the Western Front: A Novel”, p.32, Random House

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• Believing is easier than thinking; that's why there will always be more believers than thinkers. However, the results of god-belief are often far more mental trials than those of nonbelief. It is quite difficult to ascertain the wishes of an invisible being.

  Mark Thomas

  Believe, Thinking, Religion

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• I think you must remember that a writer is a simple-minded person to begin with and go on that basis. He's not a great mind, he's not a great thinker, he's not a great philosopher, he's a story-teller.

  Erskine Caldwell

  Writing, Thinking, Simple

  Erskine Caldwell (1988). “Conversations with Erskine Caldwell”, p.51, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• I will spark a generation of thinkers who will question traditional thought until they find the absolute truth.

  Kanye West

  Conceited, Generations, Sparks

  "Kanye West Sounds Off About Himself (Again) In E-mail To Media" by Shaheem Reid, www.mtv.com. January 29, 2009.

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• Reincarnation contains a most comforting explanation of reality by means of which Indian thought surmounts difficulties which baffle the thinkers of Europe.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Mean, Reality, Europe

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