Thinker Quotes - Page 6

• 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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• The Warrior listens to the words of certain thinkers.

  Paulo Coelho

  Life, Inspiration, Warrior

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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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• The underlying assumption that human nature is basically the same at all times, everywhere, and obeys eternal laws beyond human control, is a conception that only a handful of bold thinkers have dared to question.

  Isaiah Berlin

  Law, Assumption, Human Nature

  Isaiah Berlin (2013). “The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas”, p.71, Princeton University Press

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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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• 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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• I've posed nude for a photographer in the manner of Rodin's Thinker, but I merely looked constipated.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Rodin, Photographer

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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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• He [Professor Moriarty] is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Order, Cities, Evil

  "The Final Problem" (1893)

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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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• The doctrine of transmigration… was a means of constructing a plausible vindication of the ways of the cosmos to man; … none but very hasty thinkers will reject it on the grounds of inherent absurdity.

  Thomas Huxley

  Mean, Men, Way

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• Since the time of the ancient Greeks a democracy has depended on its philosophers and creative artists. It can only flourish by continuous probing, prodding, and questioning of the social conditions under which man exists and tries to better himself. One of the first moves of a dictatorship is to stifle the artists and thinkers who have the ability to stir up dissent from any prescribed dogma which might enslave them. Because the artist can arouse the curiosity and conscience of his community, he becomes a threat to those who have taken power.

  Uta Hagen

  Women, Moving, Taken

  Uta Hagen (1991). “Challenge For The Actor”, p.3, Simon and Schuster

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• Almost all rich veins of original and striking speculation have been opened by systematic half-thinkers.

  John Stuart Mill

  Intellectual, Intelligence, Veins

  John Stuart Mill (2008). “Utilitarianism and On Liberty: Including 'Essay on Bentham' and Selections from the Writings of Jeremy Bentham and John Austin”, p.67, John Wiley & Sons

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• I don't want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers

  John D. Rockefeller

  Historical, Want, Workers

  John D. Rockefeller (2015). “John D. Rockefeller on Making Money: Advice and Words of Wisdom on Building and Sharing Wealth”, p.7, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• Where the good begins.- Where the poor power of the eye can no longer see the evil impulse as such because it has become too subtle, man posits the realm of goodness; and the feeling that we have now entered the realm of goodness excites all those impulses which had been threatened and limited by the evil impulses, like the feeling of security, of comfort, of benevolence. Hence, the duller the eye, the more extensive the good. Hence the eternal cheerfulness of the common people and of children. Hence the gloominess and grief - akin to a bad conscience - of the great thinkers.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Children, Grief, Eye

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2010). “The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs”, p.115, Vintage

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• [T]he influence of the German school is most obvious in relation to the contract theory of the origin of the state and the idea of the function of the state. The theory that the state originates in an agreement between men was assailed by the German thinkers and the historical, organic, evolutionary idea substituted for it.

  Charles Edward Merriam

  School, Men, Ideas

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• The world's greatest thinkers have often been amateurs; for high thinking is the outcome of fine and independent living, and for that a professional chair offers no special opportunities.

  Havelock Ellis

  Independent, Opportunity, Thinking

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• Since my first discussions of ecological problems with Professor John Day around 1950 and since reading Konrad Lorenz's "King Solomon's Ring," I have become increasingly interested in the study of animals for what they might teach us about man, and the study of man as an animal. I have become increasingly disenchanted with what the thinkers of the so-called Age of Enlightenment tell us about the nature of man, and with what the formal religions and doctrinaire political theorists tell us about the same subject.

  Allan McLeod Cormack

  Kings, Reading, Science

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• One cannot demand of a scholar that he show himself a scholar everywhere in society, but the whole tenor of his behavior must none the less betray the thinker, he must always be instructive, his way of judging a thing must even in the smallest matters be such that people can see what it will amount to when, quietly and self-collected, he puts this power to scholarly use.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Power, Self, People

  "Aphorisms". Book by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Notebook J 85, 1799.

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• All of the people in my life whom I consider to be close friends or colleagues are good thinkers.

  John C. Maxwell

  Leadership, People, Close Friends

  John C. Maxwell (2009). “How Successful People Think: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life”, p.8, Hachette UK

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• If you want a convincing account of just how deep the shift in our new axial age is and must be, look no further than this brilliant book by Charles Eisenstein, one of the deepest integrative thinkers active today.

  Michel Bauwens

  Book, Age, Looks

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• Through books you will meet poets and novelists whose creations will fire your imagination. You will meet the great thinkers who will share with you their philosophies, their concepts of the world, of humanity and of creation. You will learn about events that have shaped our history, of deeds both noble and ignoble. All of this knowledge is yours for the taking… Your library is a storehouse for mind and spirit. Use it well.

  Neil Armstrong

  Philosophy, Book, Fire

  Neil Armstrong's letter to the children of Troy, Michigan on the opening of its Public Library (1971), as quoted in "Why Libraries Matter: Letters to the Children of Troy, Michigan (From 1971)" by Lucas Reilly on Mental Floss, July 3, 2012.

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