quotations about thought
The thoughts that come often unsought, and, as it were, drop into the mind, are commonly the most valuable of any we have, and therefore should be secured, because they seldom return again.
JOHN LOCKE
letter to Mr. Samuel Bold, May 16, 1699
For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody. The essential substance of every thought and feeling remains incommunicable, locked up in the impenetrable strong-room of the individual soul and body. Our life is a sentence of perpetual solitary confinement.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Music at Night and Other Essays
I'll put that in my considering cap.
JOHN FLETCHER
The Loyal Subject
There is nothing worth thinking but it has been thought before; we must only try to think it again.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Thought is power -- real, objective power. Moreover, the thoughts we create have a life of their own. They have a kind of material reality that affects other people for good or ill -- hence our responsibility to chose.
ANNIE BESANT
The Power of Thought
My life is slowed up by thought and the need to understand what I am living.
ANAIS NIN
diary, February 1932
Man is made or unmade by himself. In the armory of thought he forges the weapons by which he destroys himself. He also fashions the tools with which he builds for himself heavenly mansions of joy and strength and peace.
JAMES ALLEN
As a Man Thinketh
Only thought which does violence to itself is hard enough to shatter myth.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Dialectic of Enlightenment
My thoughts were like mercury--always shifting away before I could grab them or form them into a cohesive shape.
DAN SIMMONS
Endymion
True thoughts are those alone which do not understand themselves.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Minima Moralia
In the union of noble thoughts and fair phrases the sons of God still marry the daughters of men.
HORACE SMITH
The Tin Trumpet: Or, Heads and Tails for the Wise and Waggish
What you are thinking about, you are becoming.
MUHAMMAD ALI
Esquire, February 2012
There is something at the bottom of every new human thought, every thought of genius, or even every earnest thought that springs up in any brain, which can never be communicated to others, even if one were to write volumes about it and were explaining one's idea for thirty-five years; there's something left which cannot be induced to emerge from your brain, and remains with you forever.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
The Idiot
For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.
KAHLIL GIBRAN
The Prophet
I take it to be true that pure thought can grasp the real, as the ancients had dreamed.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Herbert Spencer lecture delivered at Oxford, June 10, 1933
Thought is required wherever a statement is proved, or, it may be, a general truth enunciated.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
He who influences the thought of his times influences all the times that follow. He has made his impress on eternity.
ELBERT HUBBARD
The American Bible
An artist carrying a thought from his mind into expression is like a child bearing a bucket brimming with water from the well to the house--part of the content is spilled.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
It is generally accepted that much of our thought is non-verbal, and at least some of it might be inexpressible in language. Notably, language often cannot express the concrete experiences engendered by contemporary art and fails to formulate the kind of abstract thought characteristic of much modern science. Language is not a flawless vehicle for conveying thought and feelings.
PAVLO SHOPIN
"Is language as we know it still relevant for the digital age?", Open Democracy, May 24, 2017
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. It sees man, a feeble speck, surrounded by unfathomable depths of silence; yet it bears itself proudly, as unmoved as if it were lord of the universe. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Why Men Fight: A Method of Abolishing the International Duel