-Albus Dumbledore in J K Rowling’s Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix
(more…)Thinking
855 – Quote about your mind
“You’ve been given a mind of your own. You didn’t have to buy it. You didn’t have to earn it. The most powerful and entertaining tool a thing can possess and you were all given one for free. Don’t give it away for someone else to use. Don’t let someone else buy it from you for peanuts. It’s yours. Use it for yourself. It can literally create anything. It does not have the restrictions you have been taught it has. It can comprehend anything. So have fun, and f**k anyone that tries to take it away from you. Fill it with whatever you want to fill it with… and see what kind of magic you produce.”
–anonymous
787 – “Liberty sets the mind free, fosters independence and unorthodox thinking and ideas. But it does not offer instant prosperity or happiness and wealth to everyone. This is something that politicians in particular must keep in mind.”
–Boris Yeltsin, 1st President of the Russian Federation
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751 – Quote From Abraham Lincoln’s Second Annual Message
“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.
Fellow-citizens, we can not escape history. We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.”
–Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States
741 – “A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.”
–Tyrion Lannister in George R R Martin’s A Game of Thrones
726 – “When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.”
– Winnie the Pooh in A A Milne’s The House at Pooh Corner
Happy Winnie the Pooh Day!
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683 – “It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.”
–Dale Carnegie [Attributed, See Source Notes]
660 – “When medieval writers spoke of natural law as being discoverable by reason, they meant that the best human reasoning could discover it, and not, of course, that the results to which any and every individual’s reasoning led him was natural law.”
–J L Brierly
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480 – “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” | “How do I know what I think until I see what I say.”
–Flannery O’Connor | –E M Forster [both attributed]
470 – „Der Zweck der Philosophie ist die logische Klärung der Gedanken. Die Philosophie ist keine Lehre, sondern eine Tätigkeit. Ein philosophisches Werk besteht wesentlich aus Erläuterungen. Das Resultat der Philosophie sind nicht „philosophische Sätze“, sondern das Klarwerden von Sätzen. Die Philosophie soll die Gedanken, die sonst, gleichsam, trübe und verschwommen sind, klar machen und scharf abgrenzen.“
“Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. Philosophy does not result in ‘philosophical propositions,’ but rather in the clarification of propositions. Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries.”
–Ludwig Wittgenstein [See source notes for an alternative translation]