61 Quotes About Thoughts and Thinking

 

Your brain is a complicated organ that controls your thoughts, emotions, and memories.

Although humans have complex thoughts and make detailed plans, the mind is a mystery that scientists are still trying to solve.

It is fascinating to know that, for centuries, great scholars have thought about our thinking.

The term for thinking about one’s thinking is called metacognition.

Metacognition is the state of awareness about one’s own thought processes.

If you have ever thought about your own thoughts or the patterns behind why you think what you think, you have engaged in metacognition.

If someone says you are meta, they mean you are self-aware or self-reflexive. Your thoughts, actions, or speech refer back to yourself, while simultaneously being one step beyond yourself.

Meta is yourself, but at a higher level.

Meta means to go beyond, to transcend. Meta may also mean to change.

What meta words do you know?

Metaphor. Metamorphosis. Metaverse. And, of course, metacognition.

Become aware of your thought processes.

Understand the patterns of your thinking.

Think about what you think, why you think it, and how your thoughts affect every aspect of your life.

Go forth and be meta.

Use these quotes to think about thinking.

 

Quotes About Thoughts and Thinking

The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds. ~ Will Durant

Learning without thought is labor lost; and thought without learning is perilous. ~ Confucius

Those that think much govern those that toil. ~ Oliver Goldsmith

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. ~ William James

Read and fear not thine own understanding. ~ James Shirley

Men can live without air a few minutes, without water for about two weeks, without food for about two months – and without a new thought for years on end. ~ Kent Ruth

You sometimes think you want to disappear, but all you really want is to be found. ~ Scott Mescudi (aka Kid Cudi)

To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination... ~ Albert Einstein

Let thoughts be governed by reason. ~ Cem-Çu

Transform, from a fault-finder and blamer to a solution-finder and appreciator. ~ Maddy Malhotra

Who thinks before he does, thriveth before he thinks. ~ Nicolas Ling and John Bodenham (Politeuphuia, Wit’s Common-wealth)

Man has been born for two things—thinking and acting. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

To think is to live. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

You cannot envy your neighbor’s wisdom, if he gives you good counsel; nor his riches, if he supplies you in your wants; nor his greatness, if he employs it to your protection. ~ Jonathan Swift

It is the hardest thing in the world to be a good thinker without being a good self-examiner. ~ Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury

It is very easy to think as all the world now think; but to think as all the world will think thirty years hence, is not in the power of everyone. ~ Arthur Schopenhaufer

Beware of producing crude thoughts; study till thy words are matured. ~ Ptahhotep

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself. ~ Plato

True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking. It’s not about any single accomplishment. It is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. ~ James Clear

The only difference between a problem and a solution is that people understand the solution. ~ Charles Kettering

He who can think, and loves to think, will become, if he has a few good books, a wise man. ~ Alonzo Potter

He who knows not how to think, or who hates the toil of doing it, will remain imbecile, though his mind be crowded with the contents of a library. ~ Alonzo Potter

In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Speech is external thought, and thought internal speech. ~ Antoine de Rivarol

A great thought is best dressed in the simplest language. ~ Charles Nordhoff

It is a grand thing when, in the stillness of the soul, thought bursts into flame, and the intuitive vision comes like inspiration. ~ Frederick William Robertson

A collection of rare thoughts is nothing less than a cabinet of intellectual gems. ~ William B. Sprague

The best way of forgetting how you think you feel is to concentrate on what you know you know. ~ Mary Stewart

Those who know how to think need no teachers. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

A vacant mind is an invitation to vice. ~ Bernard Gilpin

Thought is deeper than speech. ~ William Cranch

The obligation of anyone who thinks of himself as responsible is to examine society and try to change it and to fight it—at no matter what risk. This is the only hope society has. This is the only way societies change. ~ James Baldwin

The habit of thinking gives an inner life, which all that we see animates and embellishes. ~ Charles Victor de Bonstetten

Good habits are highly necessary to produce good thoughts. ~ Stanisław Leszczyński

Thinking leads man to knowledge; he may see and hear, and read and learn, as much as he please, he will never know any of it, except that which he has thought over, that which by thinking he has made the property of his mind. ~ Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi

Take away thought from man’s life, and what remains? ~ Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi

Critical thinking requires us to use our imagination, seeing things from perspectives other than our own and envisioning the likely consequences of our position. ~ Sylvan Barnet and Hugo Bedau

I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking. ~ Voltaire

Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about. ~ Benjamin Lee Whorf

A man would do well to carry a pencil in his pocket, and write down the thoughts of the moment; those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable, and should be secured, because they seldom return. ~ Francis Bacon

Thought engenders thought. Place one idea on paper, another will follow it, and still another, until you have written a page. ~ George Augustus Sala

You cannot fathom your mind; there is a well of thought there which has no bottom; the more you draw from it, the more fruitful it will be. ~ George Augustus Sala

Receive your thoughts like guests, to be entertained according to their importance. ~ Abul-Fadl Ahmad Ibn Muhammad Al-Maidani

The greatest events of an age are its best thoughts. ~ Christian Nestell Bovee

It is the nature of thought to find its way into action. ~ Christian Nestell Bovee

Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it. ~ Niels Bohr

Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, and mankind the vessel. ~ Julius Charles Hare

There is no secret of the heart which our actions do not disclose; the most consummate hypocrite cannot at all times conceal the workings of the mind. ~ Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin)

Don’t be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value. ~ Arthur Miller

Thought and action should be one. ~ Gebhard Lebrecht von Blücher

Bad thoughts quickly ripen into bad actions. ~ Beilby Porteus

If you remember me, then I don’t care if everyone else forgets. ~ Haruki Murakami

A wise chief may give words, but he keeps his thoughts to himself. ~ Te Rauparaha

Nurture your mind with great thoughts; to believe in the heroic makes heroes. ~ Isaac Disraeli

Thought is twin-sister of existence; they were born together, and will die together. ~ Parmenides

Thought is a fountain from which flows all good and evil intentions. ~ Norman A. Calkins

A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by thy thoughts. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Many of us delude ourselves with the thought that if we could stand in the lot of our more fortunate neighbor, we could live better, happier and more useful lives...It is my experience that unless we can succeed in our present position, we could not succeed in any other. ~ Helen Keller

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. ~ Carl Jung

 

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