151 Thought Provoking Quotes

Following is our list of thought provoking quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about deep thought provoking.

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Famous Thought Provoking Quotes

A major stimulant to creative thinking is focused questions. — Brian Tracy

I don't pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about. — Arthur C. Clarke

Thinking begins when you ask really difficult questions. - Slavoj Žižek

Thinking begins when you ask really difficult questions. — Slavoj Žižek

Art is supposed to spark conversation and make people think. — Nick Cannon

The thought: A logical inquiry — Gottlob Frege

It's the questions we can't answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. — Patrick Rothfuss

Contemporary art challenges us.. it broadens our horizons. It asks us to think beyond the limits of conventional wisdom. — Eli Broad

Good questions outrank easy answers. — Paul Samuelson

Good questions outrank easy answers. — Paul A. Samuelson

Whatever we think about and question a lot becomes questionable. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Thought creates character. — Annie Besant

Art does not exist only to entertain, but also to challenge one to think, to provoke, even to disturb, in a constant search for truth. — Barbra Streisand

Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought is great and swift and free. — Bertrand Russell

Great thoughts are against all doctrines of conformity — Austin Osman Spare

The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon. — Brandon Sanderson

Short Thought Provoking Quotes

  • Stories make you think and dream; books make you want to ask questions. — Michael Morpurgo
  • Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind. — Theodore Roosevelt
  • One original thought is worth a thousand mindless quotings — Diogenes
  • An open mind leaves a chance for someone to drop a worthwhile thought in it. — Mark Twain
  • The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. — James McCosh
  • Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it. — Henry Ford
  • Discomfort challenges us to question our assumptions and expand our perspectives. — Michael Easter
  • Too often we... enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. — John F. Kennedy
  • I am here to make you think. . . . I am not here to make pretty pictures! — Mark Rothko
  • It was a new concept—edgy, ahead of anyone’s thinking. It made everyone talk. — Bernard Arnault

Top 10 Thought Provoking Quotes

If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old — Peter Drucker

My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness. — Maya Angelou

How strange! You lose a little from you and you cry. And your whole life is wasting and you're laughing — Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya

Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there. - Stevie Wonder

Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there. — Stevie Wonder

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Why is it that weeks and months and years go by so quickly, all in a blur, but moments last forever? — Jennifer Donnelly

Poor people have big TV's. Rich people have big libraries. - Jim Rohn

Poor people have big TV's. Rich people have big libraries. — Jim Rohn

If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut — Albert Einstein

People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice. — Charles Bukowski

We will not have failure - only success and new learning. — Queen Victoria

Thought Provoking Image Quotes

Your dreams tell you what to do; your reason tells you how to do it. - Jonas Salk quote

Your dreams tell you what to do; your reason tells you how to do it. — Jonas Salk

Thought provoking quote The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.
The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.

Most Thought Provoking Quotes

The irony is that while God doesn’t need us but still wants us, we desperately need God but don’t really want Him most of the time. — Francis Chan

If you ask managers what they do, they will most likely tell you that they plan, organise, co-ordinate and control. Then watch what they do. Don't be surprised if you can't relate what you see to those four words. — Henry Mintzberg

Librarians have always been among the most thoughtful and helpful people. They are teachers without a classroom. — Willard Scott

Thought provoking quote It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

I have found the most valuable thing in my wallet is my library card. — Laura Bush

The love of libraries, like most loves, must be learned. — Alberto Manguel

The happiest people don't necessarily have the best of everything but they make the most of everything. — Sam Cawthorn

Thought provoking quote If you have a bad thought about yourself, tell it to go to hell because that is exactly where it cam
If you have a bad thought about yourself, tell it to go to hell because that is exactly where it came from.

Data, I think, is one of the most powerful mechanisms for telling stories. I take a huge pile of data and I try to get it to tell stories. — Steven Levitt

My dream is to find individuals who take financial resources and convert them into changing the world in the most positive ways. — Jacqueline Novogratz

Reality Hunger is more than thought-provoking; it's one of the most beautiful books I've read in a long time. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Jim Rohn is one of the most articulate, powerful, thought-provoking speakers I've seen. His unique delivery and style puts him head and shoulders above the rest. — Harvey Mackay

Deep Thought Provoking Quotes

I not only think but also look and study things carefully. When I travel around, I look at things carefully, make comparisons of what I see. I don't accept things at face value, you cannot trust what you hear or see. Don't jump to conclusions without thinking. — Mahathir Mohamad

There is no other world. Nor even this one. What, then, is there? The inner smile provoked in us by the patent nonexistence of both. — Emile M. Cioran

It is necessary ... for a man to go away by himself ... to sit on a rock ... and ask, 'Who am I, where have I been, and where am I going? — Carl Sandburg

Thought provoking quote Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts.
Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts.

Are you learning to say things after listening to God, or are you saying things and trying to make God's word fit in? — Oswald Chambers

Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Either we shall find what it is we are seeking or at least we shall free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know. — Plato

Inspirational Thought Provoking Quotes

Experiences have clearly shown that an approach which 'de-medicalizes' birth, restores dignity and humanity to the process of childbirth, and returns control to the mother is also the safest approach. — Michel Odent

We never grow closer to God when we just live life. It takes deliberate pursuit and attentiveness. — Francis Chan

One common mistake is to think that one reality is the reality. You must always be prepared to leave one reality for a greater one. — Mother Meera

Thought provoking quote One small positive thought in the morning can change you whole day.
One small positive thought in the morning can change you whole day.

Lose your mind and come to your senses. — Frederick Salomon Perls

I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking — Albert Einstein

The wisdom and compassion a woman can intuitively experience in childbirth can make her a source of healing and understanding for other women. — Stephen Gaskin

What a sad era when it is easier to smash an atom than a prejudice. - Albert Einstein

What a sad era when it is easier to smash an atom than a prejudice. — Albert Einstein

If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions. — Albert Einstein

A person starts to live when he can live outside himself. - Albert Einstein

A person starts to live when he can live outside himself. — Albert Einstein

We have different experiences, but trans women have experiences that do parallel with the whole fabric of what womanhood is. Embracing trans women, listening to their stories, enriches what womanhood is. It expands it and makes it even better. — Janet Mock

Beautiful Thought Provoking Quotes

Truthful words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not truthful. Good words are not persuasive; persuasive words are not good. — Lao Tzu

Jesus evidently hates it when we tear into our brothers or sisters with demeaning words, words that fail to honor the people around us as the beautiful image-bearing creatures that they are. — Francis Chan

Rian Johnson's 'Looper' is inventive, entertaining, and thought-provoking in every way a movie can be. It is in fact the kind of movie that reminds us why we watch them and make them, a beautifully told story that deserves to be not only remembered, but acknowledged for its writing. — Jason Reitman

Thought provoking quote How amazing is it to find someone who wants to hear about all the things that go in your head.
How amazing is it to find someone who wants to hear about all the things that go in your head.

Design isn't Art. It's not about creating beautiful or thought-provoking things for the sake of it. Design is a discipline creating communication with a purpose. — Ben Hunt

Honour what is most beautiful about the past and build it into the promise of the future. — Jacqueline Novogratz

Very Thoughtful Quotes

If you have confidence in your own words, aspirations, thoughts, and actions and do your very best, you will have no need to regret the outcome of what you do. Fear and trembling are lot of the person who, while stinting effort, hopes that everything will come out precisely as he wants. — Mas Oyama

I remember very clearly someone saying, 'Don't shake hands with the cactus,' and I thought, 'Well, why not? What could possibly go wrong?' Shaking hands is a friendly gesture. — Benedict Cumberbatch

Fear is not real. The only place that fear can exist is in our thoughts of the future. It is a product of our imagination, causing us to fear things that do not at present and may not ever exist. That is near insanity Kitai. Do not misunderstand me, danger is very real, but fear is a choice. — Will Smith

Thought provoking quote Empty Minds Make The Most Noise!
Empty Minds Make The Most Noise!

Shiva danced the world into existence... that's a very nice thought. — Michael Tippett

I look back on my life with great joy. I think it was a very successful life. I always did what I wanted and never cared what anyone thought. Women's lib? I was a liberated woman long before there was a name for it. — Peggy Guggenheim

He who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality. — Anwar Sadat

Thought provoking quote Be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behavior. You are beneath the thinker. You are the stilln
Be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behavior. You are beneath the thinker. You are the stillness beneath the mental noise. You are the love and joy beneath the pain.

I play with microbes. There are, of course, many rules to this play...but when you have acquired knowledge and experience it is very pleasant to break the rules and to be able to find something nobody has thought of. — Alexander Fleming

I never thought I want to do anything, really, except not go to work properly and turn up at the same place every day and eat sandwiches in the same canteen, if I can possibly help it, as I don't think I'd be very good at it. — Dylan Moran

I got treated very badly in Texas. They don't treat beatniks too good in Texas. Port Arthur people thought I was a beatnik, though they'd never seen one and neither had I. — Janis Joplin

If your goal is purity of heart, be prepared to be thought very odd. — Elisabeth Elliot

Thoughtful Mind Quotes

As I hurtled through space, one thought kept crossing my mind - every part of this rocket was supplied by the lowest bidder. — John Glenn

It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light. — Swami Vivekananda

Your mind is a powerful thing. When you filter it with positive thoughts, your life will start to change. — Buddha

Thought provoking quote If you wouldn't say it to a friend, don't say it to yourself.
If you wouldn't say it to a friend, don't say it to yourself.

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives. — Henry David Thoreau

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become. — Buddha

The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts. — Marcus Aurelius

Thought provoking quote Integrity is choosing your thoughts and actions based on values rather than personal gain.
Integrity is choosing your thoughts and actions based on values rather than personal gain.

My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives. — Mel Brooks

Since everything is a reflection of our minds, everything can be changed by our minds. — Buddha

Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence– whether much that is glorious– whether all that is profound– does not spring from disease of thought– from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. — Edgar Allan Poe

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. — Aristotle

Deep Thought Quotes

If you let a person talk long enough you'll hear their true intentions. Listen twice, speak once. — Tupac Shakur

If you think down, you will go down. If you think up, you will go up. You’ll always travel in the direction of your thinking. — T. D. Jakes

The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do. - Michael Porter

The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do. — Michael Porter

Thought provoking quote The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.
The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.

Real value isn’t in what you own, drive, wear or live. The greater value is found in love and life, health and strength, friends and family! — T. D. Jakes

Authority, power, and wealth do not change a man; they only reveal him — Ali ibn Abi Talib

People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

A businessman cannot force you to buy his product; if he makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences; if he fails, he takes the loss. If bureaucrat makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences; if he fails, he passes the loss on to you. — Ayn Rand

Sometimes The Devil is a gentleman. - Percy Bysshe Shelley

Sometimes The Devil is a gentleman. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

The moment anyone tries to demean or degrade you in any way, you have to know how great you are. Nobody would bother to beat you down if you were not a threat. — Cicely Tyson

Great minds think alone. — Wiz Khalifa

Provoking Quotes

A church that doesn't provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn't unsettle, a word of God that doesn't get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn't touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed — ​what gospel is that? — Oscar Romero

We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n'ani ji onwe ya: 'He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.' — Chinua Achebe

Poverty is the deprivation of opportunity. - Amartya Sen

Poverty is the deprivation of opportunity. — Amartya Sen

Difficult things provoke all your irritations and bring your habitual patterns to the surface. And that becomes the moment of truth. You have the choice to launch into your lousy habitual patterns, or to stay with the rawness and discomfort of the situation and let it transform you. — Pema Chodron

If God has called you, the more they block your way, the more that trouble and temptation, the more God's love is provoked. Each attempt to stop you asks for more evidence from God. — T. B. Joshua

If to be feelingly alive to the sufferings of my fellow-creatures is to be a fanatic, I am one of the most incurable fanatics ever permitted to be at large. — William Wilberforce

Sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind but falling in love and not getting arrested. — Hunter S. Thompson

Economics, as it has emerged, can be made more productive by paying greater and more explicit attention to the ethical considerations that shape human behaviour and judgment. — Amartya Sen

No one provokes me with impunity. — Mary Queen Of Scots

Color provokes a psychic vibration. Color hides a power still unknown but real, which acts on every part of the human body. — Wassily Kandinsky

People Writing About Thought Provoking

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Read quotes by Brian Tracy

Brian Tracy
quotes on goals, leadership and excellence

787 8444
Read quotes by Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke
quotes on death, technology and magic

255 1803
Read quotes by Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj Žižek
quotes on love

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Read quotes by Nick Cannon

Nick Cannon

34 175
Read quotes by Gottlob Frege

Gottlob Frege
quotes on friendship, love and sense and reference

14 186
Read quotes by Patrick Rothfuss

Patrick Rothfuss
quotes on love

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More Thought Provoking Quotes

As a man is, so he sees. — William Blake

I am sometimes asked, 'Why do you spend so much of your time and money talking about kindness to animals when there is so much cruelty to men?' I answer: 'I am working at the roots.' — George Thorndike Angell

The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Big Data is like teenage sex: everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it. — Dan Ariely

You can use all the quantitative data you can get, but you still have to distrust it and use your own intelligence and judgment. — Alvin Toffler

A man of worth never gets up to unsay what he said yesterday. — Chinua Achebe

Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one. — Neil Gaiman

A university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library. — Shelby Foote

Librarians are tour-guides for all of knowledge. — Patrick Ness

Libraries are our friends. — Neil Gaiman

The strips about the military do seem to provoke moving and thoughtful responses. It's nice when the strip resonates, but more importantly, I need to know when I'm getting something wrong. The last thing I want to do is contribute to the suffering that wounded warriors already endure. — Garry Trudeau

I think cinema should provoke thoughts, sure, but using it as I soapbox I think is the wrong place. — Jeremy Renner

I'm just trying to tell a good story and make thought-provoking, entertaining films. I just try and draw upon the great culture we have as a people, from music, novels, the streets. — Spike Lee

Data really powers everything that we do. — Jeff Weiner

Data are becoming the new raw material of business. — Craig Mundie

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