Thinking Being Quotes

The glory of man is that he is a thinking being. It is the nature of man to think and therein he differs from animals

Whatever that be which thinks, understands, wills, and acts, it is something celestial and divine.

We are all equal not because we partake in some peculiar nature or because we share in the same credo of unreasoned beliefs, but because we take it that no thinking being is incapable of seeing reason.

Somewhere between apathy and anarchy lies the thinking human being.

Sometimes I think it is a great mistake to have matter that can think and feel. It complains so.

Some care is needed in using Descartes' argument. "I think, therefore I am" says rather more than is strictly certain. It might seem as though we are quite sure of being the same person to-day as we were yesterday, and this is no doubt true in some sense. But the real Self is as hard to arrive at as the real table, and does not seem to have that absolute, convincing certainty that belongs to particular experiences.

Non cogitant, ergo non sunt.

If, then, there must be something eternal, let us see what sort of Being it must be. And to that it is very obvious to Reason, that it must necessarily be a cogitative Being. For it is as impossible to conceive that ever bare incogitative Matter should produce a thinking intelligent Being, as that nothing should of itself produce Matter.

Philosophy, which formerly raised man to feel conscious of himself because he was a thinking being and to say, 'I think therefore I am," now raises him to say ... "I think, therefore I am not," (unless he takes thought into consideration only in that humble region where it is confused with action).

Man has always seen himself the peak of creation. The part of the universe that thinks. The purpose for it all. It's no doubt a gratifying view, but the universe may have a different opinion.

What a strange development of patriotism that turns a thinking being into a loyal machine!

To affirm life is to deepen, to make more inward, and to exalt the will-to-life. At the same time the man who has become a thinking being feels a compulsion to give every will-to-live the same reverence for life that he gives to his own. He experiences that other life as his own. He accepts as being good: to preserve life, to raise to its highest value life which is capable of development; and as being evil: to destroy life, to injure life, to repress life which is capable of development. This is the absolute, fundamental principle of the moral, and it is a necessity of thought.

Man is a conscious, rational thinker and a supra-conscious creator genius.

Man is a reasoning Animal.

My God...it can think.

God is a thing that thinks.

Man is a thinking being. The way he thinks is related to society, politics, economics, and history and is also related to very general and universal categories and formal structures. But thought is something other than societal relations.

Then you have a big problem, because a human is a thinking animal. If you don't think, you're not really a human.

Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapour, a drop of water is enough to kill him. but even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the advantage the universe has over him. The universe knows none of this.

For myself, I like a universe that, includes much that is unknown and, at the same time, much that is knowable. A universe in which everything is known would be static and dull, as boring as the heaven of some weak-minded theologians. A universe that is unknowable is no fit place for a thinking being. The ideal universe for us is one very much like the universe we inhabit. And I would guess that this is not really much of a coincidence.