This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"A thinking Man is always [discovering] something new." - Thomas Fuller
"If we can get past various fundamentalist attitudes about the spiritual life, such as attachment to a too simple code of morality, fixed interpretations of stories, and a community in which individual thinking is not prized, then many different ways of being spiritual come into view. We may discover that there are ways to be spiritual that do not counter the soul's need for body, individuality, imagination and exploration. Eventually we might find that all emotions, all human activities, and all spheres of life have deep roots in the mysteries of the soul, and therefore are holy." - Thomas Moore
"What then you do call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
"Prayer does not change God, it changes us. It deepens insight, increases intuitive perceptions, expands consciousness. It transforms personality. Prayer opens doors to let in God and let out self, to let in love and let out hate, to let in faith and let out fear. Prayer helps us to find ourselves. By praying not to get more, but to be more, we discover a way to serve, a purpose for which to live, a dream to make real... Prayer is thinking and thanking. It is thinking of our many blessings and accepting them with a thankful spirit." - Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson
"Worry distorts our thinking, disrupts our work, disquiets our soul, disturbs our body, disfigures our face, destroys our poise, depresses our friends, demoralizes our life, defeats our faith and debilitates our energy." - William A. Ward, fully William Arthur Ward
"To get others to come into our ways of thinking, we must go over to theirs; and it is necessary to follow, in order to lead." - William Hazlitt
"The best kind of conversation is that which may be called thinking aloud." - William Hazlitt
"There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so." - William Shakespeare
"Hamlet: There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." - William Shakespeare
"Nothing is good or bad but that our thinking makes it so." - William Shakespeare
"The future is a concept - it doesn't exist! There is no such thing as tomorrow! There never will be because time is always now. That's one of the things we discover when we stop talking to ourselves and stop thinking. We find there is only present, only an eternal now." - Alan Watts, fully Alan Wilson Watts
"Most of one's life ... is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking." - Aldous Leonard Huxley
""Free thought" means thinking freely... To be worthy of the name [freethinker] he must be free of two things: the force of tradition and the tyranny of his own passions. No one is completely free from either, and in the measure of a man's emancipation he deserves to be called a free thinker." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"In the principle of equality I discern two tendencies: the one leading the mind of every man to untried thoughts; the other prohibiting him from thinking at all." - Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
"Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking; where it is absent, discussion is apt to become worse than useless." -
"18/40/60 Rule When you're eighteen, you worry about what everybody is thinking of you. When you're forty, you don't give a damn about what anybody thinks of you. When you're sixty, you realize nobody's been thinking about you at all." - Daniel Amen
"Man’s general way of thinking of the totality, i.e., his general world view, is crucial for overall order of the human mind itself. If he thinks of the totality as constituted of independent fragments, then that is how his mind will tend to operate, but if he can include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken, and without a border (for every border is a division or break) then his mind will tend to move in a similar way, and from this will flow an orderly action within the whole. " - David Bohm, fully David Joseph Bohm
"Our thinking and our behaviour are always in anticipation of a response. It is therefore fear-based." - Deepak Chopra
"Set aside all involvements and let the myriad things rest. Zazen is not thinking of good, not thinking of bad. It is not conscious endeavour. It is not introspection. Do not desire to become a buddha; let sitting or lying down drop away. Be moderate in eating and drinking. Be mindful of the passing of time, and engage yourself in zazen as though you are saving your head from fire." -
"As long as your going to be thinking anyway, think big. " - Donald Trump
"The human community is evolving… We can survive anything you care to mention. We are supremely equipped to survive, to adapt and even in the long run to start thinking. " - Doris Lessing, fully Doris May Lessing, born Doris May Tayler
"Go on thinking that you don't need to be read and you'll find that it may become quite true: no one will feel the need to read it because it is written for yourself alone; and the public won't feel any impulse to gate crash such a private party. " - Dylan Marlais Thomas
"We have ignored cultural literacy in thinking about education We ignore the air we breathe until it is thin or foul. Cultural literacy is the oxygen of social intercourse." - E. D. Hirsch, Jr., fully Eric Donalid Hirsch, Jr.
"Most of the mistakes in thinking are inadequacies of perception rather than mistakes of logic. " - Edward de Bono
"A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices." - Edward R. Murrow, born Egbert Roscoe Murrow
"As light waves carry information to us we respond according to our harmonic evolution in the octaves of time … where the time continuum has existed throughout galactic space, the medium where galaxies are formed and have their being within the electromagnetic wave-form of eternal light … in which we are an integral part … as we attain the ability of positive thinking … which brings us into contact with the cosmic intelligence." - Elizabeth Klarer
"While irrational faith is the acceptance of something as true only because an authority or the majority says so, rational faith is rooted in an independent conviction based upon one's own productive observing and thinking in spite of the majority's opinion." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"What holds true of thinking and feeling holds also true of willing. Most people are convinced that as long as they are not overtly forced to do something by an outside power, their decisions are theirs, and that if they want something, it is they who want it. But this is one of the great illusions we have about ourselves. A great number of our decisions are not really our own but are suggested to us from the outside; we have succeeded in persuading ourselves that it is we who have made the decision, whereas we have actually conformed with expectations of others, driven by the fear of isolation and by more direct threats to our life, freedom, and comfort. " - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"With his discovery of the discrepancy between thinking and being, Freud not only undermined the Western tradition of idealism in its philosophical and popular forms, he also made a far-reaching discovery in the field of ethics. Until Freud, sincerity could be defined as saying what one believed. Since Freud this is no longer a sufficient definition. The difference between what I say and what I believe assumes a new dimension, namely that of my unconscious belief or my unconscious striving...Since Freud, the sentence I meant well has lost its function as an excuse. " - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"All thinking men are atheists." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"Whatever we choose to imagine can be as private as we want it to be. Nobody knows what you're thinking or feeling unless you share it." - Fred Rogers, "Mister Rogers," born Frederick McFeely Rogers
"Kind thoughts are rarer than either kind words or deeds. They imply a great deal of thinking about others. This in itself is rare. But they also imply a great deal of thinking about others without the thoughts being criticisms. This is rarer still. " - Frederick William Faber
" It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom. The universe as a whole is also weird, with laws of nature that make it hospitable to the growth of mind. I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension. God may be either a world-soul or a collection of world-souls. So I am thinking that atoms and humans and God may have minds that differ in degree but not in kind. We stand, in a manner of speaking, midway between the unpredictability of atoms and the unpredictability of God. Atoms are small pieces of our mental apparatus, and we are small pieces of God's mental apparatus. Our minds may receive inputs equally from atoms and from God. This view of our place in the cosmos may not be true, but it is compatible with the active nature of atoms as revealed in the experiments of modern physics. I don't say that this personal theology is supported or proved by scientific evidence. I only say that it is consistent with scientific evidence." - Freeman John Dyson
"Granted that nothing is ‘given’ as real except our world of desires and passions that we can rise or sink to no other ‘reality’ than the reality of our drives - for thinking is only the relationship of these drives to one another. " - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"Most thinkers write badly, because they communicate not only their thoughts, but also the thinking of them. " - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"The worst thing you can possibly do is worrying and thinking about what you could have done." - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness. " - George Orwell, pen name of Eric Arthur Blair
"It is certain that the two World Wars in which I have participated would not have occurred had we been prepared. It is my belief that adequate preparation on our part would have prevented or materially shortened all our other wars beginning with that of 1812. Yet, after each of our wars, there has always been a great hue and cry to the effect that there will be no more wars, that disarmament is the sure road to health, happiness, and peace; and that by removing the fire department, we will remove fires. These ideas spring from wishful thinking and from the erroneous belief that wars result from logical processes. There is no logic in wars. They are produced by madmen. No man can say when future madmen will reappear. I do not say that there will be no more wars; I devoutly hope that there will not, but I do say that the chances of avoiding future wars will be greatly enhanced if we are ready." - George S. Patton, fully George Smith Patton, Jr.
"The number of substitutes for fine and clean thinking the world provides positively gnaws at one's vitals. " - Harold Laski, fully Harold Joseph Laski
"What you see reflects your thinking. And your thinking but reflects your choice of what you want to see. " - Helen Schucman, born Helen Cohn
"The universe is but a kaleidoscope which turns within the mind of the so-called thinking being, who is himself a curiosity without a cause, an accident conscious of the great accident around him, and who amuses himself with it so long as the phenomenon of his vision lasts." - Henri Frédéric Amiel
"It is a very easy thing to devise good laws; the difficulty is to make them effective. The great mistake is that of looking upon men as virtuous, or thinking that they can be made so by laws; and consequently the greatest art of a politician is to render vices serviceable to the cause of virtue." - Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke
"Here it is--right now. Start thinking about it and you miss it" - Huang Po, also Huángbò Xīyùn
"When our mind works freely without any hindrance, and is at liberty to 'come' or to 'go', we attain Samadhi of Prajna, or liberation. Such a state is called the function of 'thoughtlessness'. But to refrain from thinking of anything, so that all thoughts are suppressed, is to be Dharma-ridden, and this is an erroneous view." - Dajian Hui-neng or Huineng
"To be sure, the Bible contains the direct words of God. How do we know? The Moral Majority says so. How do they know? They say they know and to doubt it makes you an agent of the Devil or, worse, a Lbr-l Dm-cr-t. And what does the Bible textbook say? Well, among other things it says the earth was created in 4004 BC (Not actually, but a Moral Majority type figured that out three and a half centuries ago, and his word is also accepted as inspired.) The sun was created three days later. The first male was molded out of dirt, and the first female was molded, some time later, out of his rib. As far as the end of the universe is concerned, the Book of Revelation (6:13-14) says: "And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind." … Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly." - Isaac Asimov, born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov
"You must find out for yourself what it is you love to do. Don't think in terms of choosing a vocation in order to fit into society, because in that way you will never discover what you love to do. When you love to do something, there is no problem of choice. When you love, and let love do what it will, there is right action, because love never seeks success, it is never caught up in imitation; but if you give your life to something which you don't love, you will never be free. But merely doing whatever you like is not doing what you love to do. To find out what you really love to do requires a great deal of penetration, insight. Don't begin by thinking in terms of earning a livelihood; but if you discover what it is you love to do, then you will have a means of livelihood." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"The mind which is not calling upon knowledge, which is not living in memory, which is totally emptying itself of the past, dying to every form of accumulation from moment to moment - it is only such a mind that can be in a state of not-knowing, which is the highest form of thinking; and then thinking has a different meaning altogether. It may not be thinking at all, as we know it, but a state of being which is not merely the opposite of not-being." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"So, life has problems and conflicts and miseries only when you use relationship as a means of becoming, that is, when you gratify yourself through relationship. When I use another, or when I use property or an idea as a means of self-expansion, which is the perpetuation of gratification, then life becomes a series of ceaseless conflicts and miseries. It is only when I understand relationship - which is the beginning of self-knowledge - that self-knowledge brings about right thinking with regard to what is; and it is right thinking that dissolves our problems - not the gurus, not the heroes, not the mahatmas, not the literature, but the capacity to see what is and not escape from what is." - Jiddu Krishnamurti