Learned Hand Quotes

Thought is a strenuous art - few practice it, and then only at rare times.

But if I didn't read, I'd think, and thinking, when you come down to it, is the most painful thing of all, and the most monopolizing

Thinking is the hardest work we can do, and among the most important

I'm asking people to think critically and not to be lazy in their thinking.

Thinking is harder work than hard work.

To most people, nothing is more troublesome than the effort of thinking.

Thought is not a gift to man but a laborious, precarious and volatile acquisition.

To act is easy; to think is hard.

The grinding of the intellect is for most people as painful as a dentist's drill.

All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think. The trouble is that men very often resort to all sorts of devices in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work.

There is but a shallow stream of thought in history.

I’m trying to think of one.

Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think.

If you're intimate with a mind as powerful as that of Ellen Willis, it takes you a long time to separate yourself from her ideas. She had an extremely powerful mind.

Most of my work is in my mind.

It's not supposed to be easy. Anyone who finds it easy is stupid.

Tall, aren't you?" she said. "I didn't mean to be." Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her.

Fuzzy thinking is, after all, just one step above not thinking at all. But to take the ideas of serious transformational thinkers and philosophers and throw the "new age" label at them is also abhorrent.

He who thinks with difficulty believes with alacrity.

What is the hardest task in the world? To think.

It is worth a lot of bother to be able to think properly.

Thinking is a bit uncomfortable, but you'll get used to it. A matter of time and practice.

Thinking is hard work, which is why you don't see many people doing it.

I hated discussing ideas with investors, because then I become a Defender of the Idea, and that influences your thought process.

You can't be a good writer without being a good thinker.