"If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking."
— Haruki Murakami

"They shrugged at each other. Fook composed himself. "O Deep Thought computer," he said, "the task we have designed you to perform is this. We want you to tell us...." he paused, "The Answer."
"The Answer?" said Deep Thought. "The Answer to what?"
"Life!" urged Fook.
"The Universe!" said Lunkwill.
"Everything!" they said in chorus.
Deep Thought paused for a moment's reflection.
"Tricky," he said finally.
"But can you do it?"
Again, a significant pause.
"Yes," said Deep Thought, "I can do it."
"There is an answer?" said Fook with breathless excitement.
"Yes," said Deep Thought. "Life, the Universe, and Everything. There is an answer. But, I'll have to think about it."
Ford glanced impatiently at his watch.
"How long?" he said.
"Seven and a half million years."
Lunkwill and Fook blinked at each other.
"Seven and a half million years!" they cried in chorus.
"Yes." said Deep Thought.

[Seven and a half million years later.... Fook and Lunkwill are long gone, but their ancestors continue what they started]

"We are the ones who will hear," said Phouchg, "the answer to the great question of Life....!"
"The Universe...!" said Loonquawl.
"And Everything...!"
"Shhh," said Loonquawl with a slight gesture. "I think Deep Thought is preparing to speak!"
There was a moment's expectant pause while panels slowly came to life on the front of the console. Lights flashed on and off experimentally and settled down into a businesslike pattern. A soft low hum came from the communication channel.

"Good Morning," said Deep Thought at last.
"Er..good morning, O Deep Thought" said Loonquawl nervously, "do you have...er, that is..."
"An Answer for you?" interrupted Deep Thought majestically. "Yes, I have."
The two men shivered with expectancy. Their waiting had not been in vain.
"There really is one?" breathed Phouchg.
"There really is one," confirmed Deep Thought.
"To Everything? To the great Question of Life, the Universe and everything?"
"Yes."
Both of the men had been trained for this moment, their lives had been a preparation for it, they had been selected at birth as those who would witness the answer, but even so they found themselves gasping and squirming like excited children.
"And you're ready to give it to us?" urged Loonsuawl.
"I am."
"Now?"
"Now," said Deep Thought.
They both licked their dry lips.
"Though I don't think," added Deep Thought. "that you're going to like it."
"Doesn't matter!" said Phouchg. "We must know it! Now!"
"Now?" inquired Deep Thought.
"Yes! Now..."
"All right," said the computer, and settled into silence again. The two men fidgeted. The tension was unbearable.
"You're really not going to like it," observed Deep Thought.
"Tell us!"
"All right," said Deep Thought. "The Answer to the Great Question..."
"Yes..!"
"Of Life, the Universe and Everything..." said Deep Thought.
"Yes...!"
"Is..." said Deep Thought, and paused.
"Yes...!"
"Is..."
"Yes...!!!...?"
"Forty-two," said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm."
— Douglas Adams (Life, the Universe and Everything)

"Don't join the book burners. Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book..."
— Dwight D. Eisenhower

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

"A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is invisible labor."
— Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)

"The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind."
— William Blake

"I just got lost in thought. It was unfamiliar territory."
— Steven Wright

"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."
— Wayne W. Dyer

"Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand."
— Ezra Pound

"If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think."
— Clarence Darrow

"But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought."
— George Orwell (1984)

"Here was a new generation, shouting the old cries, learning the old creeds, through a revery of long days and nights; destined finally to go out into that dirty gray turmoil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken..."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Yet the ivory gods, And the ebony gods, And the gods of diamond-jade, Are only silly puppet gods That people themselves Have made.-"
— Langston Hughes

"We think to much and feel to little."
— Charlie Chaplin

"Everybody generalizes from one example. At least, I do."
— Steven Brust

"In homosexual sex you know exactly what the other person is feeling, so you are identifying with the other person completely. In heterosexual sex you have no idea what the other person is feeling."
— William S. Burroughs

"I like to imagine that the world is one big machine. You know, machines never have any extra parts. They have the exact number and types of parts they need. So I figure if the entire world is a big machine, I have to be here for some reason, too. (p378)"
— Brian Selznick (The Invention of Hugo Cabret)

"People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."
— Søren Kierkegaard

"In fact, if one person is unkind to an animal it is considered to be cruelty, but where a lot of people are unkind to animals, especially in the name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned and, once large sums of money are at stake, will be defended to the last by otherwise intelligent people."
— Ruth Harrison, "Animal Machines"

"But why should you care what people will say? All you have to do is please yourself."
— Ayn Rand

"Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction from all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives by means of volitional choice. He has no automatic knowledge of what is good for him or evil, what values his life depends on, what course of action it requires. Are you prattling about an instinct of self-preservation? An instinct of self-preservation is precisely what man does not possess. An 'instinct' in as unerring and automatic form of knowledge. A desire is not an instinct. A desire to live does not give you the knowledge required for living. And even man's desire to live is not automatic: your secret evil today is that that is the desire you do not hold. Your fear of death is not a love of life and will not give you the knowledge needed to keep it. Man must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process of thinking, which nature will not force him to perform. Man has the power to act as his own destroyer--and that is the way he has acted through most of history."
— Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)

"Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it."
— Samuel Johnson

"Keep your heart clear
And transparent,
And you will
Never be bound.
A single disturbed thought
Creates ten thousand distractions."
— Ryokan

"Have you ever been in a conflict with someone who thought he was wrong. If you are not wrong, then you will be willing to consider how you might be mistaken."
— Arbinger Institute (The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict)

"I like to imagine that the world is one big machine. You know, machines never have any extra parts. They have the exact number and types of parts they need. So I fugure if the entire world is a big machine, I have to be here for some reason, too(p378)."
— Hugo Cabret

"A culture of unaccountability is a culture without incentive, and a culture without incentive is the death of critical and creative thinking."
— Michael R. LeGault

"What work have I got to do, then?" said Will, but went on as once, "No, on second thought, don't tell me. I sahall decide what I do. If you say my work is fighting, or healing, or exploring, or whatever you might say, I'll always be thinking about it. And if I do end up doing that, I'll be resentful because I didn't have a choice, and if I don't do it, I'll feel guilty because I should. Whatever I do, I will choose it, no one else (p.496)"
— Philip Pullman (The Amber Spyglass)

"All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity, that the dry, shriveled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut."
— Anne Brontë (Agnes Grey)

"When the time is ripe for certain things, these things appear in different places in the manner of violets coming to light in early spring."
— Farkas Bolyai

"Don't keep forever on the public road,going only where others have gone, and following one after the other like a flock of sheep. Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods. 'Every time you do so you will be certain to find something that you have never seen before. Of course it will be a little thing, but do not ignore it. Follow it up, explore all around it; one discovery will lead to another, and before you know it you will have something worth thinking about to occupy your mind. All really big discoveries are the results of thought."
— Alexander Graham Bell

"If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be the history of its successive regrets and its impotences."
— Albert Camus

"Maybe sometimes we don't do the right thing because the wrong thing looks more dangerous, and we don't want to look scared, so we go and do the wrong thing just because it's dangerous. We're more concerned with not looking scared than with judging right. It's very hard.
p. 193"
— Philip Pullman (The Amber Spyglass)

"Attachment to one's own belief,
Aversion for another's view: all this is thought."
— Chandrakiriti

" Tears

Tears are like rain. They loosen up our soil so we can grow in different directions.

Tears shed on the rocky places of our lives can make tiny pebbles out of the boulders that block our paths. Tears can help us see anew if we're willing to look straight ahead--clearly, openly, and with expectation of a better view.

~Virginia Casey "
— ~Virginia Casey

"Ihr redet, wenn ihr aufhört mit euren Gedanken in Frieden zu sein."
— Kahlil Gibrán

"[D]er Gedanke ist ein Vogel, der Raum braucht und in einem Käfig von Worten zwar seine Flügel ausbreiten, aber nicht fliegen kann."
— Kahlil Gibrán

"Never again allow me to say that medical science is on the verge of conquering disease."
— Victor Vaughn