Education makes a greater difference between man and man, than nature has made between man and brute. The virtues and powers to which men may be trained, by early education and constant discipline, are truly sublime and astonishing. Newton and Locke are examples of the deep sagacity which may be acquired by long habits of thinking and study.
John Adams (1735-1826) American lawyer, Founding Father, statesman, US President (1797-1801)
Letter to Abigail Adams (1775-10-29)
(Source)
Quotations about:
contemplation
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
Learning without thought ends in a blur. Thought without learning will soon totter.
[學而不思則罔、思而不學則殆。]Confucius (c. 551- c. 479 BC) Chinese philosopher, sage, politician [孔夫子 (Kǒng Fūzǐ, K'ung Fu-tzu, K'ung Fu Tse), 孔子 (Kǒngzǐ, Chungni), 孔丘 (Kǒng Qiū, K'ung Ch'iu)]
The Analects [論語, 论语, Lúnyǔ], Book 2, verse 15 (2.15) (6th C. BC – AD 3rd C.) [tr. Ware (1950)]
(Source)
Many (but not all) translators suggest that learning/study here is not general academics, but examining and maintaining the ancient traditions.
(Source (Chinese)). Alternate translations:
Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous.
[tr. Legge (1861)]
Learning with [sic] thought is a snare; thought without learning is a danger.
[tr. Jennings (1895)]
Study without thinking is labour lost. Thinking without study is perilous.
[tr. Ku Hung-Ming (1898)]
Learning without thought is useless. Thought without learning is dangerous.
[tr. Soothill (1910)]
Education without meditation is useless. Meditation without education is risky.
[tr. Soothill (1910), alternate]
Research without thought is a mere net and entanglement: thought without gathering data, a peril.
[tr. Pound (1933)]
He who learns but does not think, is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.
[tr. Waley (1938)]
If one learns from others but does not think, one will be bewildered. If, on the other hand, one thinks but does not learn from others, one will be in peril.
[tr. Lau (1979)]
If one studies but does not think, one is caught in a trap. If one thinks but does not study, one is in peril.
[tr. Dawson (1993)]
To study without thinking is futile. To think without studying is dangerous.
[tr. Leys (1997)]
Learning without thinking is fruitless; thinking without learning is perplexing.
[tr. Huang (1997); additional translations.]
Studying but not thinking, it is confused; Thinking but not studying, it is dangerous.
[tr. Cai/Yu (1998)]
Learning without due reflection leads to perplexity; reflection without learning leads to perilous circumstances.
[tr. Ames/Rosemont (1998)]
If he studies and does not reflect, he will be rigid. If he reflects but does not study, he will be shaky.
[tr. Brooks/Brooks (1998)]
To learn and never think -- that's delusion. But to think and never learn -- that is perilous indeed!
[tr. Hinton (1998)]
If you learn without thinking about what you have learned, you will be lost. If you think without learning, however, you will fall into danger.
[tr. Slingerland (2003)]
Learning without thought is pointless. Thought without learning is dangerous.
[tr. Watson (2007)]
If you learn but do not think, you will be dazed. If you think but do not learn, you will be in danger.
[tr. Chin (2014)]
Learning from books without critical thinking results in confusion. Thinking vacuously without learning from books is perilous.
[tr. Li (2020)]
As the Swiss inscription says: Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden — “Speech is silvern, Silence is golden”; or, as I might rather express it: speech is of time, silence is of eternity.
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish essayist and historian
Sartor Resartus, Book 3, ch. 3 (1831)
(Source)
But the greatest undertakings should not be overly pondered, lest contemplation of difficulties too clearly foreseen appall you.
[Los grandes empeños aun no se han de pensar, basta ofrecerse, porque la dificultad, advertida, no ocasione el reparo.]
Baltasar Gracián y Morales (1601-1658) Spanish Jesuit priest, writer, philosopher
The Art of Worldly Wisdom [Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia], § 204 (1647) [tr. Fischer (1937)]
(Source)
(Source (Spanish)). Alternate translations:
As to great enterprizes, we must not stand reasoning, it is enough that we embrace them when they present, lest the consideration of their difficulty make us abandon the attempt.
[Flesher ed. (1685)]
Great undertakings are not to be brooded over, lest their difficulty when seen causes despair.
[tr. Jacobs (1892)]
In moments of great danger, don't even think, simply act. Don't dwell on the difficulties.
[tr. Maurer (1992)]
In short, the contradiction in the old defense of class stratification is that it defends leisure for the leisure class, but not for the underclass. With reference to the underclass, leisure is said to destroy the incentive to work, leads to slothfulness and self-indulgence, and retards cognitive and moral development. When applied to the leisure class, the concept evokes an image of Plato and Aristotle, whose leisure was based on slave labor, creating the intellectual foundations of Western civilization; or patrician slave-owners like Washington and Jefferson laying the foundations of American civilization; or creative aristocrats like Count Leo Tolstoy or Bertrand, Earl Russell; or, even closer to home, of our own sons and daughters (or of ourselves, when we were young adults) being freed from the stultifying tasks of earning a living until well into our adult years so that we could study in expensive universities to gain specialized knowledge and skills.
James Gilligan (b. c. 1936) American psychiatrist and author
Preventing Violence, ch. 5 (2001)
(Source)
The Intellect engages us in the pursuit of Truth. The Passions impel us to Action.
[Cogitatio in vero exquirendo maxime versatur, appetitus impellit ad agendum.]
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) Roman orator, statesman, philosopher
De Officiis [On Duties; On Moral Duty; The Offices], Book 1, ch. 35 (1.35) / sec. 132 (44 BC) [Barnes (1814)]
(Source (Latin)). Alternate translation:
Reflection is chiefly employed in the investigation of truth, appetite impels to action.
[tr. McCartney (1798)]
Reflection chiefly applies itself in the search of truth. Appetite prompts us to action.
[tr. Edmonds (1865)]
Thought is occupied chiefly in seeking the truth; impulse urges to action.
[tr. Peabody (1883)]
Thought is employed in the discovery of truth, appetite impels to action.
[tr. Gardiner (1899)]
Thought is occupied chiefly with the discovery of truth; impulse prompts to action.
[tr. Miller (1913)]
Thought is mostly expended in seeking out the truth, passion urges men to action.
[tr. Edinger (1974)]
The worst thing about war was the sitting around and wondering what you were doing morally.
Paul Fussell (1924-2012) American cultural and literary historian, author, academic
Times of London (28 Nov 1991)
In the middle of the night, things well up from the past that are not always cause for rejoicing — the unsolved, the painful encounters, the mistakes, the reasons for shame or woe. But all, good or bad, give me food for thought, food to grow on.
May Sarton (1912-1995) Belgian-American poet, novelist, memoirist [pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton]
At Seventy (1984)
(Source)
There is no doubt that solitude is a challenge and to maintain balance within it a precarious business. But I must not forget that, for me, being with people or even with one beloved person for any length of time without solitude is even worse. I lose my center. I feel dispersed, scattered, in pieces. I must have time alone in which to mull over my encounter, and to extract its juice, its essence, to understand what has really happened to me as a consequence of it.
May Sarton (1912-1995) Belgian-American poet, novelist, memoirist [pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton]
Journal of a Solitude (1973)
(Source)
For even the humblest person, a day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search for truth and perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.
Lewis Mumford (1895-1990) American writer, philosopher, historian, architect
The Condition of Man (1944)
(Source)
No matter what the belief, if it had modestly said, “This is our best thought, go on, think farther!” then we could have smoothly outgrown our early errors and long since have developed a religion such as would have kept pace with an advancing world. But we were made to believe and not allowed to think. We were told to obey, rather than to experiment and investigate.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) American sociologist, writer, reformer, feminist
His Religion and Hers, ch. 10 (1923)
Solitude is not lack.
Laurie Helgoe (b. 1960) American psychologist and author
Introvert Power, ch. 2 (2008)
(Source)
Sometimes misquoted "Solitude is not a lack."
Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.
[Pour qu’une chose soit intéressante, il suffit de la regarder longtemps.]
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) French writer, novelist
Letter to Alfred Le Poittevin (16 Sep 1845)
(Source)
Alt. trans.: "To make something interesting, just look at it for a long time."
In meditation we should not look for a “method” or “system,” but cultivate an “attitude,” and “outlook”: faith, openness, attention, reverence, expectation, supplication, trust, and joy.
Thomas Merton (1915-1968) French-American religious and writer [a.k.a. Fr. M. Louis]
Contemplative Prayer (1973)
Anger blows out the lamp of the mind. In the examination of a great and important question, every one should be serene, slow-pulsed and calm.
Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer, agnostic, orator
“The Christian Religion,” Article 3, The North American Review (1881)
(Source)
One of the things I like best about animals in the wild is that they’re always off on some errand. They have appointments to keep. It’s only we humans who wonder what we’re here for.
Diane Ackerman (b. 1948) American poet, author, naturalist
“In Praise of Bats,” The Moon by Whale Light (1991)
(Source)
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learnanything or anyone
that does not bring you aliveis too small for you.
Truth is compar’d in Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in a perpetuall progression, they sick’n into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition.
[Truth is compared in Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in a perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition.]
Then I went back to my hotel to think long thoughts. As is usual when I’m thinking long thoughts, I lay on the bed with my eyes closed. Susan says I often snore when thinking long thoughts.
Be able to be alone. Loose not the advantage of Solitude, and the Society of thy self, nor be only content, but delight to be alone and single with Omnipresency.
Thomas Browne (1605-1682) English physician and author
Christian Morals, Part 3, sec. 9 (1716)
(Source)
I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
“Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1841)
Sometimes I don’t know if my life is complicated, or if it’s that I just think too much about things.
John Scalzi (b. 1969) American writer
Zoe’s Tale (2008)
But the greatest gift in the power of loneliness to bestow is the realization that life does not consist either of wallowing in the past or of peering anxiously at the future; and it is appalling to contemplate the great number of often painful steps by which one arrives at a truth so old, so obvious, and so frequently expressed. It is good for one to appreciate that life is now. Whether it offers little or much, life is now — this day — this hour — and is probably the only experience of the kind one is to have.
Charles Macomb Flandrau (1871-1938) American author and essayist
Viva Mexico!, ch. 7 (1908)
I could wile away the hours
Conferrin’ with the flowers,
Consultin’ with the rain;
And my head I’d be scratchin’
While my thoughts were busy hatchin’,
If I only had a brain.E. Y. "Yip" Harburg (1896-1981) American lyricist [Edgar Yipsel Harburg, b. Isidore Hochberg]
“If I Only Had a Brain,” The Wizard of Oz (1939)
A good solution applied with vigor now is better than a perfect solution applied ten minutes later.
George S. Patton (1885-1945) American soldier
(Attributed)
It’s what people know about themselves inside that makes them afraid.
Ernest Tidyman (1928-1984) American author and screenwriter
High Plains Drifter (film) (1973)
It is infinitely difficult to know when and where one should stop, and for all but one in thousands the goal of their thinking is the point at which they have become tired of thinking.
[Es ist unendlich schwer, zu wissen, wenn und wo man bleiben soll, und Tausenden für einen ist das Ziel ihres Nachdenkens die Stelle, wo sie des Nachdenkens müde geworden.]
Gotthold Lessing (1729-1781) German playwright, philosopher, dramaturg, writer
Letter to Moses Mendelssohn (9 Jan 1771)
Success for the most part attends those who act boldly, not those who weigh everything, and are slow to venture.
Xerxes I (519-465 BC) King the Achaemenid Empire of Persia [Xerxes the Great]
In Herodotus, The Persian Wars, 7.50 [tr. Rawlinson (1942)]
‘Patriotism is not enough.’ But neither is anything else. Science is not enough, religion is not enough, art is not enough, politics and economics are not enough, nor is love, nor is duty, nor is action however disinterested, nor, however sublime, is contemplation. Nothing short of everything will really do.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
The Island, “Notes on What’s What” (1962)
But in stating prudential rules for our government in society I must not omit the important one of never entering into dispute or argument with another. I never yet saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by argument. I have seen many of their getting warm, becoming rude, & shooting one another. Conviction is the effect of our own dispassionate reasoning, either in solitude, or weighing within ourselves dispassionately what we hear from others standing uncommitted in argument ourselves.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter to Thomas Jefferson Randolph (24 Nov 1808)
If we are to survive, we must have ideas, vision, courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (1917-2007) American historian, author, social critic
“The Decline of Greatness,” Saturday Evening Post (1 Nov 1958)
Self-correction begins with self-knowledge.
[Principio es de corregirse el conocerse]
Baltasar Gracián y Morales (1601-1658) Spanish Jesuit priest, writer, philosopher
The Art of Worldly Wisdom [Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia], § 69 (1647) [tr. Maurer (1992)]
(Source)
(Source (Spanish)). Alternate translations:
The knowledge of one's self is the beginning of amendment.
[Flesher ed. (1685)]
Self-knowledge is the beginning of self-improvement.
[tr. Jacobs (1892)]
It is a first principle that in order to improve yourself, you must first know yourself.
[tr. Fischer (1937)]
The question is: Bad as I am, have I the right to think? And I think I have for two reasons: First, I cannot help it. And secondly, I like it.
Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer, agnostic, orator
“What Must We Do To Be Saved?” Sec. 1 (1880)
(Source)
Learning makes a Man fit Company for himself.
Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs, #3163 (1732)
(Source)
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) American poet
“To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee”
The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is more important than the eye. We are active; and indeed we know, as something more than a symbolic accident in the evolution of man, that it is the hand that drives the subsequent evolution of the brain. We find tools today made by man before he became man. Benjamin Franklin in 1778 called man “a tool-making animal,” and that is right.
Jacob Bronowski (1908-1974) Polish-English humanist and mathematician
The Ascent of Man, ch. 3 (1973)
Leisure is the mother of Philosophy; and Common-wealth, the mother of Peace, and Leisure: Where first were great and flourishing Cities, there was first the study of Philosophy.
Illness is a convent which has its rule, its austerity, its silences, and its inspirations.
Albert Camus (1913-1960) Algerian-French novelist, essayist, playwright
Notebooks: 1942-1951, Notebook 4, Jan 1942 – Sep 1945 [tr. O’Brien/Thody (1963)
(Source)
HAMLET: Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Hamlet, Act 3, sc. 1, l. 91ff (3.1.91-96) (c. 1600)
(Source)
"Conscience" in this case is used in its archaic form, as consciousness, awareness.
Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.
James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) American diplomat, essayist, poet
Among My Books, “Dryden” (1870)
Act nothing in furious Passion; it’s putting to Sea in a Storm.
Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Introductio ad Prudentiam, Vol. 1, # 365 (1725)
(Source)
I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-American physicist
(Attributed)
The pillow is a silent Sibyl, and to sleep upon an enterprise avails more than to be sleepless under it.
[Es la almohada Sibila muda, y el dormir sobre los puntos vale más que el desvelarse debajo de ellos.]
Baltasar Gracián y Morales (1601-1658) Spanish Jesuit priest, writer, philosopher
The Art of Worldly Wisdom [Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia], § 151 (1647) [tr. Fischer (1937)]
(Source)
(Source (Spanish)). Alternate translations:
The Pillow is a dumb Sibylle. To sleep upon a thing that is to be done, is better than to be awaked by a thing already done.
[Flesher ed. (1685)]
The pillow is a silent Sibyl, and it is better to sleep on things beforehand than lie awake about them afterwards.
[tr. Jacobs (1892)]
The pillow is a tongueless sibyl, and it is better to sleep on something than to lie awake when things are on top of you.
[tr. Maurer (1992)]
Thought is the labor of the intellect, reverie is its pleasure.
[La pensée est le labeur de l’intelligence, la rêverie en est la volupté.]
Victor Hugo (1802-1885) French writer
Les Misérables, Vol. 4 “St. Denis,” Book 2 “Eponine,” ch. 1 “The Field of the Lark” (1862) [tr. Wilbour]
Alt trans. [Denny (1980)]: "Thought is the work of the intellect, reveries its self-indulgence." Cited as Part IV, ch. 2 "Eponine."
As it is better to give than to receive, so it is better to share the fruit of one’s contemplation than merely to contemplate.
[Sicut enim maius est illuminare quam lucere solum, ita maius est contemplata aliis tradere quam solum contemplari.]
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Italian friar, philosopher, theologian
Summa Theologica, 2a-2ae, “Treatise on the States of Life,” Q.188 “Of the Different Kinds of Religious Life” (1265-1274)
(Source)
Alt. trans.:
- "Just as it is better to illuminate than merely to shine, so to pass on what one has contemplated is better than merely to contemplate."
- "Better to illuminate than merely to shine; to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate."
- "Better to light up than merely to shine, to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate." [Source]
- "For even as it is better to enlighten than merely to shine, so it is better to give to others the fruits of one's contemplation than merely to contemplate." [Source]
