Thoughtful Quotations

Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

A thoughtful cup of tea brought to your bedside each morning means more to me than the huge bouquet of flowers bought once a year.

Stop the habit of wishful thinking and start the habit of thoughtful wishes.

Let the workers organize. Let the toilers assemble. Let their crystallized voice proclaim their injustices and demand their privileges. Let all thoughtful citizens sustain them, for the future of Labor is the future of America.

If I could offer but one helpful hint to young Hoosiers hoping to better their odds for success in life, I would simply note the importance of thoughtful reading.

I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.

It's appropriate to celebrate public service, and the thoughtful people who choose to serve. They symbolize what is good and decent about this historic citizen legislature, and we thank them.

I found out about reviews early on. They're mostly written by sad men on bad afternoons. That's probably why I'm less angry than some writers, who are so narcissistic they consider every line of every review, even a thoughtful one, as major treason.

Writing in a journal reminds you of your goals and of your learning in life. It offers a place where you can hold a deliberate, thoughtful conversation with yourself.

If you think about some of the things that are being talked about by thoughtful, intelligent scientists, you realize that in 100 years the human race won't even be recognizable.

Give back in some way. Always be thoughtful of others.

The benefits and consequences of globalization have a great deal to do with whether we're intelligent and thoughtful about how we approach globalization, or whether we're blindly accepting... or blindly resistant.

I think coming to work and being absurd and neurotic and thoughtful at the same time is far more interesting.

As citizens we have to be more thoughtful and more educated and more informed. I turn on the TV and I see these grown people screaming at each other, and I think, well, if we don't get our civility back, we're in trouble.

Practical gifts are another great way to be thoughtful, and they work for anything from birthdays to dinner-party gifts.

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

I don't have a grand master plan, but I try to be thoughtful when I can and also silly. It's part of the fun.

Those old adages - you attract more with honey; do unto others - are true. You can get attention by being acerbic or mean or making a bizarre comment. But by being nice, being empathetic, building relationships and listening, people begin to recognize that you're thoughtful and respectful of their position.

Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.

This is the power of gathering: it inspires us, delightfully, to be more hopeful, more joyful, more thoughtful: in a word, more alive.

To understand a difficult topic like Iraq takes patience and care. Unfortunately, you rarely hear a patient, careful or thoughtful discussion of intelligence these days.

We are losing sight of civility in government and politics. Debate and dialogue is taking a back seat to the politics of destruction and anger and control. Dogma has replaced thoughtful discussion between people of differing views.

We can't be anti-everything - we need an energy plan that adds up. But there's a lack of numeracy in the public discussion of energy. Where people do use numbers, they select them to sound big and score points in arguments, rather than to aid thoughtful discussion.

As much as I like to be thoughtful and think things through in my decision making - I don't like knee jerk decisions - but I'm not afraid to make decisions.

There is a bedrock decency to people in the Midwest. They are thoughtful and ready to help you if something needs to be done.

The velocity and knee-jerk response to events happening in real time that television brings us precludes any kind of reflection or contemplation and therefore analysis. And that's been one of the greatest political dangers in the post-war era. The idea of the reasoned, thoughtful response goes out of the window.

Every thoughtful and kind-hearted person must regard with interest any device or plan which promises to enable at least the more intelligent, enterprising, and determined part of those who are not capitalists to cease to labor for hire.

The danger of what's happening right now in terms of using reconciliation is, the purpose of the Senate is going to be defeated. And that is to bring consensus to big issues in this country so that we have a reasoned and thoughtful approach and that the American public buys into it.

But my father was also the one who told me I needed to clean up my mouth or I'd never find a man. What's very important to him is manners. Show up on time. Always send thank-you letters. He is one of the more thoughtful humans I've ever met. He's a great man and a very good dad.

The best founders are extremely thoughtful and have an eye for quality. I don't know if there's any generic advice here that would be helpful. Startup knowledge is a moving target.

Do we value privacy in any real way? Thinking about blogs, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace... all these suggest we value exposure rather more. And instead of challenging this transformation, as they are supposed to - certainly at the more thoughtful edges of the art - novelists are buying into it wholesale.

There is this tremendous body of knowledge in the world of academia where extraordinary numbers of incredibly thoughtful people have taken the time to examine on a really profound level the way we live our lives and who we are and where we've been. That brilliant learning sometimes gets trapped in academia and never sees the light of day.

I like somebody who's not so crazy but likes to have a good time... and who is thoughtful and kind and easy to laugh with. Somebody you can just be yourself with one hundred and fifty percent.

How can we live in harmony? First we need to know we are all madly in love with the same God.

Like most thoughtful people who watch what's going on in Washington, venting is very necessary.

I am not leaving twitter. If the mindless few defeat the thoughtful majority we are all doomed.

Researching 'Lone Wolf,' I was amazed at how thoughtful and intelligent these animals are. There has never been a documented attack against a human by a wolf that wasn't provoked by the human.

A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.

I've never dieted in my life; I like food too much. I'm just thoughtful about what I eat, and I'm lucky that I love the taste of vegetables. I'm certainly not 'actress skinny,' and I never will be. I'm strong, and my body works great for me.

I can sing fine and I can play guitar fine, but put 'em together and it becomes a thoughtful effort.

One of the things we often miss in succession planning is that it should be gradual and thoughtful, with lots of sharing of information and knowledge and perspective, so that it's almost a non-event when it happens.

That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell.

We came, we saw, we bedazzled! You know, and it's hard to be serious and thoughtful when you're dressed like a Skittle.

I've interviewed multiple people who know bin Laden... who tend to have a universal picture of what he's like, which is: modest, retiring, unassuming, kind of thoughtful - lots of things that don't fit with a mass murderer, which he is as well.

Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.

Thoughtful people of different political philosophies can disagree, but in a very agreeable manner.

At the heart of the failure of most plays is the inability to carry on a thoughtful conversation about your work with yourself.

Gay people are the sweetest, kindest, most artistic, warmest and most thoughtful people in the world. And since the beginning of time all they've ever been is kicked.

A comedian is sort of like a wild animal. It really just depends on where you catch them. Sometimes they want to cuddle up, and sometimes they'll snap at you. But for me, more often than not, if I'm talking to somebody who makes their living in comedy, it'll be a very thoughtful conversation driven from an emotionally honest place.

Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.

I don't mind doing interviews. I don't mind answering thoughtful questions. But I'm not thrilled about answering questions like, 'If you were being mugged, and you had a lightsaber in one pocket and a whip in the other, which would you use?'

We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.

A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

Gradually, everything that happens in the world is coming to be of interest everywhere in the world, and, gradually, thoughtful men and women everywhere are sitting in judgment upon the conduct of all nations.

Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off.

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.

There is a tremendous amount of support for the approach we have taken, which again is to base our decisions on risk analysis and thoughtful scientific process.

The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.

We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.

You get to a point where you have to start planning, when you cross that line where you have enough value to get someone's movie made if you attach yourself to it, you have to be very thoughtful and have to plan. When you're starting out, you're willing to do anything.

My mum was too busy raising four of us to encourage my hopes. But I'm glad I had the upbringing I did. It made me a worrier and a thoughtful, curious person.

The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.

The true genius shudders at incompleteness - and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.

When you taste things in the right order, sometimes they taste so much different than if you taste them out of order. Not that there's a right order, like by rule, but just like in a thoughtful way that makes sense.

I love Alton Brown's show 'Good Eats,' about the chemistry of food. It's really thoughtful.

To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.

That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.

The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.

Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.

Judy Miller is the most innocent person in this case. I really thought that was outrageous that she was jailed and we needed as journalists to draw a line in the sand in a strong but thoughtful way.

Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood?

The main purpose of life is to live rightly, think rightly, act rightly. The soul must languish when we give all our thought to the body.

Language pedants hew to an oral tradition of shibboleths that have no basis in logic or style, that have been defied by great writers for centuries, and that have been disavowed by every thoughtful usage manual.

It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial.

It is difficult to discern a serious threat to religious liberty from a room of silent, thoughtful schoolchildren.

Television is apparently the enemy of nuance. But nuance is essential for a thoughtful discussion.

Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed.

I like John Kerry. I think he's intellectually curious and very thoughtful. I think he's deeply committed on issues like the environment. I think he's an internationalist, which I am.

People get very thoughtful when they are in cars. I no longer care for cars. I don't collect them.

Deeply earnest and thoughtful people stand on shaky footing with the public.

To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness.

The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.

Better to illuminate than merely to shine, to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate.

It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves.

All the efforts of the human mind cannot exhaust the essence of a single fly.

Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.

A man has free choice to the extent that he is rational.

Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

You may think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me like a trifle, but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, the poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day; that by honest work, I had earned a dollar. I was a more hopeful and thoughtful boy from that time.

Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do.

Thoughtful financial planning can easily take a backseat to daily life.

Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.

To be content with life or to live merrily, rather all that is required is that we bestow on all things only a fleeting, superficial glance; the more thoughtful we become the more earnest we grow.

Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.

The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.

Managing a business, small or large, today requires an extremely disciplined, thoughtful approach with regard to the pressure that people are under.