As (a man) thinks in his heart, so is he.

Proverbs 23:7 (New King James Version)
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

Aristotle

"The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing."

John Adams

"Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God's service, when it is violating all His laws."

John Adams

"The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the 
mind."

William Blake, 'The Marriage of Heaven & Hell' (1757 - 1827)

"The real cause of the great upheavals which precede changes of civilisations, such as the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of the Arabian Empire, is a profound modification in the ideas of the peoples .... The memorable events of history are the visible effects of the invisible changes of human thought .... The present epoch is one of these critical moments in which the thought of mankind is undergoing a process of transformation."

Gustave Le Bon, (1841-1931) French psychologist and sociologist in The Crowd, 1895

"Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German Lutheran theologian

"Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think."

Jean De La Bruyère
"The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration."
 
Pearl S. Buck 
"I think anybody who doesn't think I'm smart enough to handle the job is underestimating." 
 
George W. Bush; U.S. News & World Report, April 3, 2000

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful ... They never stop thinking about new ways 
to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

George W. Bush, from remarks by the president at the signing of The Defense Appropriations Act for 2005 (8/5/04)

"Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought."

G.K. Chesterton

"The great intellectual tradition that comes down to us from the past was never interrupted or lost through such trifles as the sack of Rome, the triumph of Attila, or all the barbarian invasions of the Dark Ages. It was lost after the introduction of printing, the discovery of America, the founding of the Royal Society, and all the enlightenment of the Renaissance and the modern world. It was there, if anywhere, that there was lost or impatiently snapped the long thin delicate thread that had descended from distant antiquity; the thread of that unusual human hobby: the habit of thinking."

G.K. Chesterton

"Quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts."

Winston Churchill

"Of all the inanimate objects, of all men's creations, books are the nearest to us, for they contain our very thoughts, our ambitions, our indignations, our illusions, our fidelity to truth, and our persistent leaning toward error."

Joseph Conrad, (1857-1924) Source: Notes on Life and Letters
"Aristotle was famous for knowing everything. He taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and is not involved in the process of thinking. This is true only of certain persons."

Will Cuppy (1884-1949)

"Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist."

Frederick Douglass

"The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them."

Albert Einstein

"Either you think - or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you."

F. Scott Fitzgerald, (1896-1940) Source: Tender is the Night, 1934
"The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory."

Paul Fix

"Every attempt to gag the free expression of thought is an unsocial act against society.
That is why judges and juries who try to enforce such laws make themselves ridiculous."

Jay Fox, Source: in Liberty and the Great Libertarians (Charles Spradling), 1913

"Without Freedom of Thought there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as Public Liberty, without Freedom of Speech."

Benjamin Franklin

"It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the 
troubled sea of thought."

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908 - )
"Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both."

John Andrew Holmes,  Wisdom in Small Doses


"People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

"The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously."

Henry Kissinger

"The Christian cannot be satisfied so long as any human activity is either opposed to Christianity or out of connection with Christianity. Christianity must pervade not merely all nations but also all of human thought."

J. Gresham Machen

"In his role as gadfly, [Princeton's University Center for Human Values Professor] Peter Singer renders the very useful service of making clear that the logic supporting the unlimited abortion license imposed by the Supreme Court in 1973's Roe v. Wade decision necessarily extends to infanticide, euthanasia, eugenics, and other measures that he espouses, and for which many who support that license wrongly criticize him as an extremist. Peter Singer, with his scheme of individual preference utilitarianism, has simply thought the matter through more consistently than most supporters of the pro-choice position, which is a position of -- although such people may never have heard the phrase before -- individual preference utilitarianism."

Richard John Neuhaus

"The conjunction of ruling and dreaming generates tyranny."

Michael Oakeshott

"So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people that don't even know that fire is hot."

George Orwell

"Most people would rather die than think, in fact, most do."

Bertrand Russell

"I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring 
some portion of misery to an end."

Albert Schweitzer

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