Intellectual Reflection Quotes

We both (Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett) insist on a lot of time being available almost every day to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. We read and think.

Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.

Thinking is the most overrated human activity.

The course of every intellectual, if he pursues his journey long and unflinchingly enough, ends in the obvious, from which the non-intellectuals have never stirred.

The philosophers must station themselves in the middle.

I'm contemplating thinking about thinking...but....it's overrated - just get another drink in!

Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the disinclination to think or praise.

Thinking is different from perceiving and is held to be in part imagination, in part judgment

One of the few ways I can almost be certain I'll understand something is by sitting down and writing about it. Because by forcing yourself to write about it and putting it down in words, you can't avoid having your say on the subject. You might be wrong, but you have to think about it very intensely to write about it.

Music causes us to think eloquently.

Logic is a wonderful thing but doesn't always beat actual thought.

Once the people begin to reason, all is lost

The voice of a person thinking, discovering, revising, is ever-present without any loss in grace or ease.

If what charms you is nothing but abstract principles, sit down and turn them over quietly in your mind: but never dub yourself a Philosopher.

That man is best who sees the truth himself. Good too is he who listens to wise counsel. But who is neither wise himself nor willing to ponder wisdom is not worth a straw.

A library represents the mind of its collector, fancies and foibles, strengths and weaknesses, prejudices and preferences.

By the time a philospher answers a question weve usually forgotten what was asked.

We thought philosophy ought to be patient and unravel people's mental blocks. Trouble with doing that is, once you've unravelled them, their heads fall off.

Books are those faithful mirrors that reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes.

And as well as I dream, I reason if I want, for that's just another kind of dream.

The conditions conducive to deep thought have become increasingly rare in our highly mediated lives... Now we live in an attention economy, where the most in-demand commodity is 'eyeballs.

Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.

In years that bring the philosophic mind.

Is the humanism intuitive or labored over?, the answer is: Yes. It begins intuitively, it becomes the reason for writing the thing, and then it's to be considered and fine-tuned and even calculated.

It is not only visitors to the zoo who are fascinated but uneasy in the presence of chimpanzees; the same is true of scientists. The more they learn about these great apes, the deeper our identity crisis seems to become. The resemblance between humans and chimpanzees is not only external. If we look straight and deep into a chimpanzee’s eyes, an intelligent, self-assured personality looks back at us. If they are animals, what must we be?