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Human Thought Quotes

Browse 127 quotes about Human Thought.

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Human Thought Quotes

“The programmer, who needs clarity, who must talk all day to a machine that demands declarations, hunkers down into a low-grade annoyance. It is here that the stereotype of the programmer, sitting in a dim room, growling from behind Coke cans, has its origins. The disorder of the desk, the floor; the yellow Post-It notes everywhere; the whiteboards covered with scrawl: all this is the outward manifestation of the messiness of human thought. The messiness cannot go into the program; it piles up around the programmer.”

NeedsHumansRoomsBehindsDemandLowsSittingProgramMachinesNotesClarityPostsManifestationGradesCoveredDisorderYellowDesksStereotypeDeclarationProgrammersCokeAnnoyanceHuman ThoughtMessinessGrowlingPost It Notes
Author:Ellen Ullman
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“The spoken discourse may roll on strongly as the great tidal wave; but, like the wave, it dies at last feebly on the sands. It is heard by few, remembered by still fewer, and fades away, like an echo in the mountains, leaving no token of power. It is the written human speech, that gave power and permanence to human thought.”

WritingHumansMayStillsLastsDiesWrittenHeardMountainSpeechLeavingWaveRememberedSandFewerFadesEchoesDiscoursePermanenceFade AwayTokensHuman ThoughtTidal Waves
Author:Albert Pike
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“If human thought is a growth, like all other growths, its logic is without foundation of its own, and is only the adjusting constructiveness of all other growing things. A tree cannot find out, as it were, how to blossom, until comes blossom-time. A social growth cannot find out the use of steam engines, until comes steam-engine-time.”

IfsHumansUseScienceSocialGrowthGrowingProgressTreeLogicFoundationInventionEnginesSteamAdjustingHuman ThoughtSteam EnginesGrowing Things
Book:Lo!
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“The Christian religion seems to have fulfilled its great biological purpose, in so far as we are able to judge. It has led human thought to independence, and has lost its significance, therefore, to a yet undetermined extent.... It seems to me that we might still make use in some way of its form of thought, and especially of its great wisdom of life, which for two thousand years has proven to be particularly efficacious.”

WayYearsHumansStillsTwoUseSeemsMightAbleChristianFormPurposeLostChristianityJudgingThousandIndependenceSignificanceFulfilledThousand YearsProvenLife WisdomHuman ThoughtGreat Wisdom
Author:Carl Jung
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“It is your organized religions that have made it clear through their most sacred scriptures that cruelty and killing is an acceptable response to human frailty and human differences. This goes against every human instinct, but organized religion has reorganized human thoughts. Some humans have even been turned against their own instinct for survival. And so people go around maiming and killing each other, because they've been told quite directly that this is what God does to them--and what God wants them to do to each other.”

PeopleWantHumansDoeMadeReligionDifferencesClearSurvivalSacredInstinctResponseKillingScriptureCrueltyMade ItOrganizedAcceptableFrailtyOrganized ReligionHuman ThoughtKilling Each OtherHuman FrailtiesSacred Scripture
Author:Neale Donald Walsch
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“One must not consider a language as a product dead, and formed but once; it is an animate being, and ever creative. Human thought elaborates itself with the progress of intelligence; and of this thought language is a manifestation. An idiom cannot therefore remain stationary; it walks, it develops, it grows up, it fortifies itself, it becomes old, and it reaches decrepitude.”

HumansLanguageGrowsWalksCreativeGrowing UpProgressProductsManifestationHuman ThoughtIdiomStationary
Author:Wilhelm von Humboldt
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“Information wants to be free.' So goes the saying. Stewart Brand, the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, seems to have said it first.I say that information doesn't deserve to be free.Cybernetic totalists love to think of the stuff as if it were alive and had its own ideas and ambitions. But what if information is inanimate? What if it's even less than inanimate, a mere artifact of human thought? What if only humans are real, and information is not?...Information is alienated experience.”

IfsThinkingWantFirstsHumansSaidIdeasRealWholeSeemsEarthStuffAliveInformationAmbitionDeserveMereBrandsWhat IfFoundersArtifactsHuman Thought
Book:You Are Not a Gadget
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“After Bruno's death, during the first half of the seventeenth century, Descartes seemed about to take the leadership of human thought... in promoting an evolution doctrine as regards the mechanical formation of the solar system... but his constant dread of persecution, both from Catholics and Protestants, led him steadily to veil his thoughts and even to suppress them. ...Since Roger Bacon, perhaps, no great thinker had been so completely abased and thwarted by theological oppression.”

FirstsHumansHalfCenturyEvolutionRegardCatholicConstantDoctrineOppressionThinkerDreadPersecutionVeilsPromotingFormationTheologicalProtestantsRogerSolar SystemHuman ThoughtGreat Thinkers
Author:Andrew Dickson White
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“Anthropology has reached that point of development where the careful investigation of facts shakes our firm belief in the far-reaching theories that have been built up. The complexity of each phenomenon dawns on our minds, and makes us desirous of proceeding more cautiously. Heretofore we have seen the features common to all human thought”

MindHumansHas BeensFactsBeliefCommonTheoryDevelopmentBuiltCarefulFirmDawnFeaturesComplexityShakesReachingPhenomenonInvestigationAnthropologyProceedingHuman ThoughtFirm Beliefs
Book:A Franz Boas Reader: The Shaping of American Anthropology, 1883-1911
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“The branches of mathematics are as various as the sciences to which they belong, and each subject of physical enquiry has its appropriate mathematics. In every form of material manifestation, there is a corresponding form of human thought, so that the human mind is as wide in its range of thought as the physical universe in which it thinks.”

ThinkingMindHumansFormUniverseSubjectsMaterialsMathematicsVariousWideRangeManifestationBranchesAppropriateHuman MindCorrespondingHuman ThoughtEnquiry
Author:Benjamin Peirce
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“Some god or Weltgeist has been making a movie out of us for the past six thousand years, and now we have turned a corner on the movie set of reality and have discovered the boards propping up the two-dimensional monuments of human history. The movement of humanism has reached its limit, and now at that limit it is breaking apart into the opposites of mechanism and mysticism and moving along the circumference of a vast new sphere of posthuman thought.”

YearsHumansHas BeensTwoRealityPastMovingMovementThousandLimitsSixOppositesHarmonyHumanismCornersBoardsMysticismSpheresMechanismThousand YearsHuman HistoryMonumentHuman ThoughtMovie SetsBreaking Apart
Book:Passages about Earth: An Exploration of the New Planetary Culture
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“By conversing with the mighty dead, we imbibe sentiment with knowledge. We become strongly attached to those who can no longer either hurt or serve us, except through the influence which they exert over the mind. We feel the presence of that power which gives immortality to human thoughts and actions, and catch the flame of enthusiasm from all nations and ages.”

GivingFeelsMindHumansAgeActionReadingNationsHurtInfluenceEnthusiasmImmortalityFlamesSentimentsThoughts And ActionsHuman Thought
Book:The Letters of William Hazlitt
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“Never can a new idea move within the law. It matters not whether that idea pertains to political and social changes or to any other domain of human thought and expression - to science, literature, music; in fact, everything that makes for freedom and joy and beauty must refuse to move within the law. How can it be otherwise? The law is stationary, fixed, mechanical, 'a chariot wheel' which grinds all alike without regard to time, place and condition, without ever taking into account cause and effect, without ever going into the complexity of the human soul.”

HumansIdeasSoulMatterFactsMovingLawPoliticalJoyLiteratureSocialCausesConditionsEffectsExpressionAccountsRegardRefuseFixedComplexityWheelsNew IdeasSocial ChangeDomainHuman SoulGrindCause And EffectHuman ThoughtChariotsStationary
Author:Emma Goldman
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“Sacred interpreter of human thought, How few respect or use thee as they ought! But all shall give account of every wrong, Who dare dishonor or defile the tongue; Who prostitute it in the cause of vice, Or sell their glory at a market-price!”

GivingHumansUseCausesOughtGloryAccountsSacredSellsVicesDareTongueTheeInterpreterDishonorHuman Thought
Book:The Works of Cowper and Thompson: Including Many Letters and Poems Never Before Published in this Country. With a New and Interesting Memoir of the Life of Thomson
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“By wit we search divine aspect above, By wit we learn what secrets science yields, By wit we speak, by wit the mind is rul'd, By wit we govern all our actions; Wit is the loadstar of each human thought, Wit is the tool by which all things are wrought.”

MindHumansActionSpeakSecretDivineAspectToolsAll ThingsWitYieldOur ActionsHuman Thought
Book:The dramatic and poetical works: With memoirs of the authors and notes
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“Just as a pool of water cannot reflect the sky overhead when it is restless and disturbed, so we can never get a perfect vision of the Divine, and show it to others when we are disturbed with human thoughts and personal problems. It is only when we are quite still and receptive that God can think His thoughts into us and use us for His purposes.”

ThinkingHumansStillsGodUseShowsProblemPurposePeaceWaterPerfectVisionSkyDivinePoolRestlessDisturbedReceptiveOverheadHuman ThoughtPersonal Problems
Author:Alice Hegan Rice
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“The research reported on in our book "A=B", has moved a whole active field of mathematics from the province of human thought to the realm of computer-fodder. It is quite exciting to think about what other fields of pure mathematics, hitherto thought to be reserved to human intelligence, might be moved to that realm next. The goal is to put ourselves out of business completely, and the work is well underway.”

ThinkingHumansWellsBookWholeMightScienceNextGoalFieldsPureComputerResearchExcitingMathematicsMovedActiveRealmsReservedProvincesHuman ThoughtHuman IntelligenceFodder
Author:Herbert Wilf
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“The subject for which I am asking your attention deals with the foundations of mathematics. To understand the development of the opposing theories existing in this field one must first gain a clear understnding of the concept "science"; for it is as a part of science that mathematics originally took its place in human thought.”

FirstsHumansDealsAttentionClearSubjectsFieldsTheoryDevelopmentConceptsGainsAskingMathematicsFoundationOpposingHuman Thought
Author:L. E. J. Brouwer
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“Mind is the great lever of all things; human thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately answered; and the diffusion of knowledge, so astonishing in the last half-century, has rendered innumerable minds, variously gifted by nature, competent to be competitors or fellow-workers on the theatre of intellectual operation.”

MindHumansEndsLastsProcessHalfCenturyIntellectualAll ThingsFellowsWorkersTheatreOperationsGiftedCompetitorsAstonishingCompetentHuman ThoughtLeversDiffusionFellow Workers
Book:The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster
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“Two radical ideas have been introduced into human thought. One of them is that energy and matter are pretty much the same sort of stuff. That's Einstein. The other is that revenge is a bad idea. Revenge is an enormously popular idea but, of course, Jesus came along with the radical idea of forgiveness. If you're insulted, you have to square accounts. So this invention by Jesus is as radical as Einstein's.”

IfsHumansHas BeensTwoIdeasMatterCoursesJesusEnergyStuffAccountsRevengeInventionRadicalSquaresBad IdeasInsultedHuman ThoughtRadical Ideas
Author:Kurt Vonnegut
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“A religious belief is not a statement about Reality, but a hint, a clue about something that is a mystery, beyond the grasp of human thought. In short, a religious belief is only a finger pointing to the moon. Some religious people never get beyond the study of the finger. Others are engaged in sucking it. Others yet use the finger to gouge their eyes out. These are the bigots whom religion has made blind. Rare indeed is the religionist who is sufficiently detached from the finger to see what it is indicating - these are those who, having gone beyond belief, are taken for blasphemers.”

PeopleHumansMadeUseRealityEyeBeliefReligiousGoneStudyTakenMysteryMoonBlindFingersStatementsEngagedCluePointingHintsDetachedReligious BeliefBigotsHuman ThoughtPointing Fingers
Author:Anthony de Mello
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“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.”

HumansIdeasRealMomentsFallCausesProcessMankindEffectsEventsTransformationProfoundCriticalInvisibleMemorableVisibleEmpiresCivilisationRoman EmpireEpochHuman ThoughtUpheavalModificationArabianCritical Moments
Author:Gustave Le Bon
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“Sartre is one example of someone who does just this. Every text is, after all, a human document and whatever Kierkegaard thought about God was clearly a matter of human thought that can, in principle, be retrieved and interpreted by other human beings. A phenomenological approach to religion must, it seems to me, adopt the old adage: nothing human is alien to me.”

HumansDoeMatterSeemsHuman BeingsPrinciplesExampleApproachAliensDocumentsAdagesHuman Thought
Author:George Pattison
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“If I were a physics teacher or a science teacher, it'd be on my mind all the time as how the hell we really got this way. It's a perfectly natural human thought and, okay, if you go into the science class you can't think this. Well, alright, as soon as you leave you can start thinking about it again without giving aid and comfort to the lunatic fringe of the Christian religion.”

IfsThinkingWayGivingMindHumansWellsChristianNaturalClassHellTeacherComfortOkayAidsPhysicsFringeAlrightLunaticHuman ThoughtPerfectly NaturalScience TeacherScience Class
Author:Kurt Vonnegut
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