Inspiration often begins with a single thought—a spark that can ignite creativity, motivation, and positive change. Whether you're seeking a fresh perspective or a boost to overcome challenges, these carefully selected 78 inspirational thinking quotes offer powerful insights from some of the greatest minds. Dive in and let these words encourage you to think differently, embrace new ideas, and unlock your full potential.
1. “Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.” - Thomas A. Edison
2. “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” - Albert Einstein
3. “Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.” - Mahatma Gandhi
4. “Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.” - Voltaire
5. “Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in.” - Napoleon Bonaparte
6. “The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.” - Horace Walpole
7. “Why should things be easy to understand?” - Thomas Pynchon
8. “People don’t like to think, if one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.” - Helen Keller
9. “The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards.” - William Francis Butler
10. “I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.” - Albert Einstein
11. “I could not think without writing.” - Jean Piaget
12. “Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different.” - Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
13. “Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too.” - Voltaire
14. “Keep your heart clearAnd transparent,And you willNever be bound.A single disturbed thoughtCreates ten thousand distractions.” - Ryokan
15. “The human mind works at low efficiency. Twenty percent is the figure usually given. When, momentarily, there is a flash of greater power, it is termed a hunch, or insight, or intuition.” - Isaac Asimov
16. “If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change.” - Ray Bradbury
17. “Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard."(Interview with NEH chairman Bruce Cole, Humanities, July/Aug. 2002, Vol. 23/No. 4)” - David McCullough
18. “Here is a truth that most teachers will not tell you, even if they know it: Good training is a continual friend and a solace; it helps you now, and assures you of help in the future. Good education is a continual pain in the neck, and assures you always of more of the same.” - Richard Mitchell
19. “There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing.” - Isaac D'Israeli
20. “For this feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy.” - Plato
21. “Thinking is not a thing that can undo itself. It can never be its own solution.” - Zach Plague
22. “I am too much of a skeptic to deny the possibility of anything.” - Thomas Henry Huxley
23. “Are you in great physical pain, or is that your thinking expression?” - G.A. Aiken
24. “It's the craziest thing, but I can't stop thinking about you.” - Anna Godbersen
25. “The alternative to thinking in evolutionary terms is not to think at all.” - P.B. Medawar
26. “We do not live to think, but, on the contrary, we think in order that we may succeed in surviving.” - José Ortega y Gasset
27. “Dreaming is another form of thinking, more concrete, more economical, more visual, and often more emotional than the thoughts of the day, but a thinking through of the day, nevertheless.” - Siri Hustvedt
28. “We assured Phelan that we were more than happy to let him have you and your menagerie,” Leo retorted.“After that, he said he needed to think.”“About what?” Beatrix demanded. “What is there to think about? Why is it taking him so long to make a decision?”“He’s a man, dear,” Amelia explained kindly. “Sustained thinking is very difficult for them.” - Lisa Kleypas
29. “My dull brain was wrought with things forgotten.” - William Shakespeare
30. “Life is an experimental journey undertaken involuntarily. It is a journey of the spirit through the material world and, since it is the spirit that travels, it is the spirit that is experienced. That is why there exist contemplative souls who have lived more intensely, more widely, more tumultuously than others who have lived their lives purely externally.” - Fernando Pessoa
31. “A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It’s not our thoughts, but our attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it’s true, without inquiring. A belief is a thought that we’ve been attaching to, often for years.” - Byron Katie
32. “Tabini was at least canny enough in the differences between atevi and human to know that, gut level, he might think he understood - but chances were very good that he wouldn't, couldn't, and never would, unaided by the paidhi, come up with the right forecast of human behavior because he didn't come with the right hardwiring. Average people didn't analyze what they thought: they thought they thought, and half of it was gut reaction.” - C.J. Cherryh
33. “You are moving on the chariot of your desire whatever you are thinking is always right.” - Santosh Kalwar
34. “It is so important to think for yourself.” - Jude Morgan
35. “Start writing by thinking, not wrestling with words.” - Jonathan Price
36. “To think is to be sick...” - Djuna Barnes
37. “Let us reflect, if we wish to be brilliant. Too much improvisation empties the mind in a stupid way. Running beer gathers no froth. No haste, gentlemen.” - Victor Hugo
38. “I often arrive at quite sensible ideas and judgements, on the spur of the moment. It is when I stop to think that I become foolish.” - Jerome K. Jerome
39. “I count myself as one of the number of those who learn as they write and write as they learn.” - John Piper
40. “And Siobhan says people go on holidays to see new things and relax, but it wouldn’t make me relaxed and you can see new things by looking at earth under a microscope or drawing the shape of the solid made when 3 circular rods of equal thickness intersect at right angles. And I think that there are so many things just in one house that it would take years to think about all of them properly. And also, a thing is interesting because of thinking about it and not because of it being new.” - Mark Haddon
41. “I was thinking lots of things, but most of them needed to stay thoughts, not words.” - Maggie Stiefvater
42. “...most people are almost blind and they don’t see most things and there is lots of spare capacity in their heads and it is filled with things which aren’t connected and are silly, like, “I’m worried that I might have left the gas cooker on.” - Mark Haddon
43. “To be a philosopher, just reverse everything you have ever been told...and have a sense of humor doing it.” - Criss Jami
44. “If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don't bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.” - Richard Buckminster Fuller
45. “Why were there no words that spoke positively about being concerned about the self? Why was there only negative connotation in terms like "selfish", "self-interested", "self-centred", "self-obsessed" and so on? Why was it so much better to be without a self: "selfless", "self-sacrificing", "self-effacing", etc?” - A.J. Dalton
46. “The only freedom you truly have is in your mind, so use it.” - M.T. Dismuke
47. “Places are people as well as rocks, trees and buildings. Places are moments in time.” - A.J. Dalton
48. “Don't believe everything you think. Thoughts are just that - thoughts.” - Allan Lokos
49. “To be perfectly honest, I enjoy thinking dangerously” - JImmy Henderson
50. “The author indicts "our culture's rush toward efficiency, speed, quantification, and distraction" and counters with the value of "the time and attention required to find the best words and images and then hold them together in ways that illuminate. This, she diagnoses, "is now wildly countercultural. It is inefficient. Its value is not readily quantifiable. Its utility is intangible.” - Cherie Harder
51. “I’ll promise to think twice before I take any important step you seriously disapprove of.” - Anne Brontë
52. “If I didn't know you I would say I don't know you.” - Jaime Cabrera
53. “Les idées sont le contraire de la pensée.” - Albert Camus
54. “philosophes qui ont pu autrefois se soustraire de l'empire de la fortune, et, malgré les douleurs et la pauvreté, disputer de la félicité avec leurs dieux. Car s'occupant sans cesse à considérer les bornes qui leur étaient prescrites par la nature, ils se persuadaient si parfaitement que rien n'était en leur pouvoir que leurs pensées, que cela seul était suffisant pour les empêcher d'avoir aucune affection pour d'autres choses; et ils disposaient d'elles si absolument qu'ils avaient en cela quelque raison de s'estimer plus riches, et plus puissants, et plus libres, et plus heureux qu'aucun des autres hommes, qui, n'ayant point cette philosophie, tant favorisés de la nature et de la fortune qu'ils puissent être, ne disposent jamais ainsi de tout ce qu'ils veulent. (partie 3, para 4)” - René Descartes
55. “God is not honored by groundless love. In fact, there is no such thing. If we do not know anything about God, there is nothing in our mind to awaken love. If love does not come from knowing God, there is no point in calling it love for God.” - John Piper
56. “Amanda olhou para ele - Tens de compreender que já não sou a rapariga que era dantes. Sou casada e sou mãe e, tal como toda a gente, não sou perfeita. Debato-me com as escolhas que fiz e cometo erros e passo grande parte do tempo a interrogar-me sobre quem sou realmente ou se a minha vida tem algum significado sequer. Não sou de modo nenhum uma pessoa especial, Dawson, e tens de perceber isso. Tens de compreender que sou apenas... uma pessoa vulgar.” - Nicholas Sparks
57. “A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in--what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.” - Victor Hugo
58. “Thinking goes on in your head. It is not really deep into the roots of your being; it is not your totality.” - Osho
59. “The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren't there. The answers are there in the morning.” - Alain De Botton
60. “I like Saturdays. They are my best thinking days. It is my day to try to find that one special thought that turns into an idea that I remember forever and becomes a part of who I am, like a freckle or a finger or an ear. Even before I open my eyes I take a deep breath and try to picture something, anything, as if my brain were a keyhole where I can spy on my future. So each Saturday morning I try to find a little piece of a thought, and then I keep turning it over in my mind until it turns into a complete idea and at the end of the day when I'm lying in bed I put the whole thought into a little room in my head so I can remember it.” - Jack Gantos
61. “We realize we can't go around saying and doing what we're actually thinking and feeling. If we all did that, life would be a lunatic asylum. Indeed, that's how you know you're talking to a lunatic. Lunatics are those poor souls who have lost their inner communication and so they allow themselves to say and do exactly what they are thinking and feeling and that's why they're mad.” - Robert McKee
62. “An honest bookstore would post the following sign above its 'self-help' section: 'For true self-help, please visit our philosophy, literature, history and science sections, find yourself a good book, read it, and think about it.” - Roger Ebert
63. “It's only because I've lived with brothers that I realize, after a moment, that he's not looking outside but rather inside, wrestling with something inside himself. And there's nothing for it but to wait.” - Maggie Stiefvater
64. “People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.” - Helen Keller
65. “They Want You To Be A Docile Apathetic Consumer” - Bill Hicks
66. “I—I didn't think—""That," said Professor McGonagall, "is obvious.” - J.K. Rowling
67. “The manlier you are, the harder it is to understand what a woman wants: there is not a hint of female brain in you.” - Criss Jami
68. “It is one of the unexpected disasters of the modern age that our new unparalleled access to information has come at the price of our capacity to concentrate on anything much. The deep, immersive thinking which produced many of civilization's most important achievements has come under unprecedented assault. We are almost never far from a machine that guarantees us a mesmerizing and libidinous escape from reality. The feelings and thoughts which we have omitted to experience while looking at our screens are left to find their revenge in involuntary twitches and our ever-decreasing ability to fall asleep when we should.” - Alain De Botton
69. “Feelings should never supersede rational thought... so, if you feel that you've got the answer, you should think some more.” - Julie Ann Elliott-Morton
70. “Quem não lê, não pensa, e quem não pensa será para sempre um servo.” - Paulo Francis
71. “The dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters the desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic.” - George Eliot
72. “As a writer of philosophy, it's good to ask oneself, 'Will I still believe this a week from now, or months, or even years?” - Criss Jami
73. “…the blogosphere is the friend of information but the enemy of thought.” - Alan Jacobs
74. “I swear to you that to think too much is a disease, a real, actual disease.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
75. “Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.” - Bertrand Russell
76. “It's nice to have things to look forward to.” - Stephen Chbosky
77. “A turmoil of winds rushed around him, spiraling up in to the air: he was thinking.” - Heather James
78. “Travelling, whether in the mental or the physical world, is a joy, and it is good to know that, in the mental world at least, there are vast countries still very imperfectly explored” - Bertrand Russell
