Speech is too often not, as the Frenchman defined it, the art of concealing Thought; but of quite stifling and suspending Thought, so that there is none to conceal.
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish essayist and historian
Sartor Resartus, Book 3, ch. 3 (1834)
(Source)
Referring to Talleyrand. Quoting Herr Teufelsdröckh.
This passage first appeared in Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country, Vol. 9, No. 54 (1834-06).
Quotations about:
unthinking
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality, that is, against the claim on our thinking attention that all events and facts make by virtue of their existence.
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
Lecture (1971), “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” Social Research (1971 Fall)
(Source)
Referring to Adolf Eichmann's use of "cliché-ridden language" as a sign of his "thoughtlessness."
Collected in The Life of the Mind, Part 1 "Thinking," Introduction (1974).
Orthodoxy means not thinking — not needing to think. Orthdoxy is unconsciousness.
George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
Nineteen Eighty-Four, Part 1, ch. 5 [Symes] (1949)
(Source)
Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man. But they don’t bite everybody.
Stanislaw Lec (1909-1966) Polish aphorist, poet, satirist
Unkempt Thoughts [Myśli nieuczesane] (1957) [tr. Gałązka (1962)]
(Source)
