Christopher Lehmann-Haupt Quotes

What is a demanding pleasure that demands the use of ones mind! Not in the sense of problem solving, but in the sense of exercising discrimination, judgment, awareness.

I like to make people think a little bit.

I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.

I like the idea that I'm making things that people might think and argue about.

The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.

One hopes that with a book or movie, the reader or the audience will emerge from it thinking. That's the most you can hope for: that you've raised questions that will be there for the audience to think about later.

I don't really have a process. I just get agitated or aroused by an idea in the world, and then I want to give my rebuttal.

People say Wu-Tang makes you think too much. What's wrong with thinking?

I enjoy a challenge or provocation, something to think about, to talk about after it's done.

A person who does not read cannot think. He may have good mental processes, but he has nothing to think about. You can feel for people or natural phenomena and react to them, but they are not ideas. You cannot think about them.

Nothing is worth reading that does not require an alert mind.

Sometimes people will find things that are wrong. Sometimes they will even find an approach that you took wrong. If you think you took the right approach, then you just absorb the criticism, but you don't change your mind.

To agree without understanding is inane. To disagree without understanding is impudent.

He is the happiest man who is engaged in a business which tasks the most faculties of his mind.

I am very interested in asking questions, and I am very interested in being involved in shows that ask people to think and feel.

Once children learn how to learn, nothing is going to narrow their mind. The essence of teaching is to make learning contagious, to have one idea spark another.

In exploring new and doubtful tracts of speculation, the mind strikes out true and original views; as a drop of water hesitates at first what direction it will take, but afterwards follows its own course.

Generalization is always a new influx of divinity into the mind. Hence the thrill that attends it.

Study detains the mind by the perpetual occurrence of something new, which may gratefully strike the imagination.

Something in the world forces us to think. This something is an object not of recognition but of a fundamental encounter.

anything that stretches the mind is a help to the potential author.

The best university that can be recommended to a man of ideas is the gauntlet of the mob.

All my different kinds of artwork have been designed to inspire people to think. They may not always agree with me, but at least they will have some feelings and some passion about whatever it is.

A popular author is one who writes what the people think. Genius invites them to think something else.

It is a gift when someone can challenge you and open your mind to new ideas.