quotations about thought
Ideas are the seeds of thought, but they do not produce flowers unless the soil where they are sown is fertile.
LADY BLESSINGTON
attributed, Day's Collacon
A word devoid of thought is a dead thing, and a thought unembodied in words remains a shadow.
LEV S. VYGOTSKY
Thought and Language
For good thoughts (though God accept them) yet, towards men, are little better than good dreams, except they be put in act; and that cannot be, without power and place, as the vantage, and commanding ground.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Great Place", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
Mankind will be enslaved until there is mental grandeur enough to allow each man to have his thought and say. This earth will be a paradise when men can, upon all these questions differ, and yet grasp each other's hands as friends.
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
Some Mistakes of Moses
Great thoughts come from the heart.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES
Reflections and Maxims
Trying to write an inspiring memoir while repressing such thoroughly uninspiring thoughts is a path to madness.
RON CHARLES
"'Woman No. 17' a juice box of suburban satire", Denver Post, May 26, 2017
Thought and action should be one.
GEBHARD LEBRECHT VON BLUCHER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Beware of producing crude thoughts; study till thy words are matured.
PTAH HOTEP
attributed, Day's Collacon
The wise man hath his thoughts in his head; the fool, on his tongue.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
There is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a Dream, a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And You are but a Thought -- a vagrant Thought, a useless Thought, a homeless Thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities.
MARK TWAIN
The Mysterious Stranger
Action helps thought, and thought helps action. By action thought is rendered more masculine, attains to greater breadth, and acquires a certain nobleness and dignity. Thanks to thought, action may become more definite, more precise, more fruitful.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
To think's audacity. God only has that right and privilege. Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that.
HERMAN MELVILLE
Moby Dick
It is not the man that gives me most of outward things that helps me to live; but the man who gives me thoughts and ideas by which a wider sweep of beauty opens to my vision, and kindles in my holy affections, by which I rise nearer to God.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought,
Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech.
ALFRED TENNYSON
In Memoriam A.H.H.
The world is your kaleidoscope, and the varying combinations of colours, which at every succeeding moment it presents to you are the exquisitely adjusted pictures of your ever-moving thoughts.
JAMES ALLEN
As a Man Thinketh
And yet, as angels in some brighter dreams
Call to the soul when man doth sleep,
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,
And into glory peep.
HENRY VAUGHN
They are all gone into the World of Light
Thought is valuable in proportion as it is generative.
EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
Caxtoniana
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
WALTER LIPPMANN
The Stakes of Diplomacy
Unlike a fountain that circulates the same water in an enclosed, perpetually recycling system, a human being circulates thoughts in an unlimited reservoir of self.
VERA NAZARIAN
The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
Food for thought gives some folks indigestion.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's