Quotes on Thinking

It's family, and it's faith, and it's friends, and it's not the glamour of the Presidency, or the wonder of going to receive the Nobel Prize. All those are important, of course. But maybe it's just that I'm 71 years old now. It's family, and it's faith, and it's friends. I would tell them that. Don't forget that. In your brilliance, don't turn your back on your friends. Don't think you're entitled to something, you're smarter than the next guy.

I think love is the most unbelievable, and critical, thing in civilization. Everything else is very mechanical and predictable, but love, you can't catch it.

All the time he's boxing, he's thinking. All the time he was thinking, I was hitting him.

So about 80 years after the Constitution is ratified, the slaves are freed. Not so you'd really notice it of course; just kinda on paper. And that of course was at the end of the Civil War. Now there is another phrase I dearly love. That is a true oxymoron if I've ever heard one: "Civil War." Do you think anybody in this country could ever really have a civil war? "Say, pardon me?" (shoots gun) "I'm awfully sorry. Awfully sorry."

A child thinks 20 shillings and 20 years can never be spent.

About one month before he was killed, when asked by David Frost how his obituary should read: Something about the fact that I made some contribution to either my country, or those who were less well off. I think back to what Camus wrote about the fact that perhaps this world is a world in which children suffer, but we can lessen the number of suffering children, and if you do not do this, then who will do this? I'd like to feel that I'd done something to lessen that suffering.

That text is known to them that have the patience to read it, possibly one one-hundredth of one percent of the denizens. They forget it, all save a few Western states. I think somebody in Dakota once read it. The Constitution.

Think for yourself. Know what you're doing. Question authority.

Learning gives us a fuller conviction of the imperfections of our nature; which one would think, might dispose us to modesty.

Diverse groups of problem solvers outperformed the groups of the best individuals at solving complex problems. The reason: the diverse groups got stuck less often than the smart individuals, who tended to think similarly.

You can't just have slogans, you can't just have catchy phrases. You have to have an agenda. And I think what the Republican Party has to do, if it's going to incorporate the tea party efforts in it, is to come up with an agenda that the American people can see, touch, and actually believe in, and something they believe in.

I think whether you're having setbacks or not, the role of a leader is to always display a winning attitude.

Art is elemental. Reason alone as it's expressed in the sciences can't be man's complete answer to reality, and it can't express everything that man can, wants to, and has to express. I think God built this into man. Art along with science is the highest gift God has given him.

Billions are wasted on ineffective philanthropy. Philanthropy is decades behind business in applying rigorous thinking to the use of money.

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be.

Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.

Both conservatives and liberals watch 'Parks and Recreation,' and they each think the show is for them, which is really cool. 'SNL' was totally different. It was exciting because everyone was paying attention. Political humor works when people know what you're talking about.

Apparently, the most difficult feat for a Cambridge male is to accept a woman not merely as feeling, not merely as thinking, but as managing a complex, vital interweaving of both.

I think we're in a disposable world and 'Stairway to Heaven' is one of the things that hasn't quite been thrown away yet.

It's sort of a feeling of power onstage. It's really the ability to make people smile, or just to turn them one way or another for that duration of time, and for it to have some effect later on. I don't really think it's power... it's the goodness.

I think my constant fiddling and meddling with the status quo may have been one of my biggest contributions to the later success of Wal-Mart.