Famous Thinkers Quotes

List of great thinkers with quotes

Sun Tzu 722–481 BC–
-- Ruling a big country is like cooking a small fish
Heraclitus 544 BC - 483 BC
-- No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.
Plato 428/427 BC – 348/347 BC
-- A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.
Diogenes 412-323 BC
-- Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings?
Aristotle 384 BC – 322 BC
-- What we have to learn, we learn by doing.
--"The whole is more than the sum of its parts." (in Metaphysics)
Leonardo da Vinci 1452 – 1519
--"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."
Nicolaus Copernicus 1473-1543
Isaac Newton 1643 – 1727
Mark Twain 1835-1910
-- "I can live for two weeks on a good compliment."
Tomas Edison 1847 – 1931
Sherlock Holmes 1854 - 1914
Hercule Poirot. Since 1922 till 1975 Poirot employed his infamous 'little grey cells' to solve a dazzling array of complex crimes in 33 novels and 54 short stories.
-- "It is the little grey cells, mon ami, on which one must rely."
Nero Wolfe 1930s to the 1970s
--You are to act in the light of experience as guided by intelligence.
--That of course is the advantage of being a pessimist; a pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant.
--A genius may discover the hidden secrets and display them; only a god could create new ones.
-- I don't answer questions containing two or more unsupported assumptions.
--The more you put in a brain, the more it will hold — if you have one.
-- Pfui
-- There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.
Albert Einstein 1879–1955
--"If at first the idea is not absurd, there is no hope for it."
-- "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."
--"I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn."
--"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

"We are what we repeatedly do, excellence then is not an act, but a habit." (Aristotle)

"I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think." (Socrates)

"Learning without thought is labor lost. Thought without learning is intellectual death." (Confucius)

"You cannot teach a man anything. You can only help him discover it within himself." (Galileo Galilei)

"Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing. does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many." Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)

"I think, therefore I am (Je pense donc je suis) (Cogito ergo sum.)" (René Descartes)

"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see" Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860)

"The best way to get a great idea is to get lots of good ideas." (Linus Pauling)

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has happened. (George Bernard Shaw. )

"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young." (Henry Ford)

"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people...." (Eleanor Roosevelt)

"The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing" (Walt Disney)

"A goal without a method is cruel." (Edwards Deming)

"I invent nothing. I rediscover." (Rodin)

"No one knows what’s next, but everybody does it."(George Carlin)

"The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing." (John Powell)

"Trust, but verify" (the old Russian proverb). Ronald Reagan, speaking to Mikhail Gorbachev.
best unknown quotes
The bottleneck is often at the top of the bottle.
Don't hitch a horse and an ox to the same wagon.
One coin in the bottle rattles; the bottle filled with coins makes no noise.
"There are many mountains up to heaven and many pathways up each mountain." an old Chinese proverb
You don't have to be perfect to be a leader, but you can't be timid.

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