As for gun control advocates, I have no hope whatever that any facts whatever will make the slightest dent in their thinking – or lack of thinking.

The degree of one’s emotions varies inversely with one’s knowledge of the facts.

Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.

A flippant, frivolous man may ridicule others, may controvert them, scorn them; but he who has any respect for himself seems to have renounced the right of thinking meanly of others.

Wisdom is nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life.

Evolution is a light illuminating all facts, a curve that all lines must follow.

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

The NICS database has holes big enough to drive a Mack truck through.

In religious and in secular affairs, the more fervent beliefs attract followers. If you are a moderate in any respect – if you’re a moderate on abortion, if you’re a moderate on gun control, or if you’re a moderate in your religious faith – it doesn’t evolve into a crusade where you’re either right or wrong, good or bad, with us or against us.

Some of my colleagues argue that by further curtailing our Second Amendment rights, they can enhance public safety. Fine, the burden of proof is on them.

Facts are stubborn things.

Ambition never is in a greater hurry than I; it merely keeps pace with circumstances and with my general way of thinking.

I think we ought to raise the age at which juveniles can have a gun.

Facts are not interesting to me.

The policemen or soldiers are only a gun in the establishments hand. They make the racist secure in his racism.

I have a very strict gun control policy: if there’s a gun around, I want to be in control of it.

A man is the whole encyclopedia of facts.

Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide.

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.

Every known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was actually verified.

What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.

The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.

People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.

I have been influenced in my thinking by both west and east.

Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout.

People should not be in a position where their children have access to weapons and ammunition.

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.

Beto’s copy of the Bill of Rights goes from one to three. Mine includes the Second Amendment. But there are a whole host of people here in Washington… they would be happy to confiscate America’s guns. And if you don’t believe that, then you probably also still believe in Bigfoot.

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.

Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!

Facts, like people, want to be free – and when they’re free, liberty is usually around the corner.

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.

The best book, like the best speech, will do it all – make us laugh, think, cry and cheer – preferably in that order.

I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards.

The mere thought hadn’t even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.

I don’t think we need more gun control laws.

Silence is golden when you can’t think of a good answer.

I sleep people. I put people unconscious. I’m stating facts.

Most of one’s life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering – because you can’t take it in all at once.

What with making their way and enjoying what they have won, heroes have no time to think. But the sons of heroes – ah, they have all the necessary leisure.

There is a group of people that I think in good faith honestly believe that further curtailing our Second Amendment rights will enhance public safety. But there’s another group that just hates the Second Amendment.

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.

Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.

Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory it too good.

When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.

Principles and rules are intended to provide a thinking man with a frame of reference.

Thinking isn’t agreeing or disagreeing. That’s voting.

Here’s something that’s contrary to popular belief: I actually don’t like thinking. I think people think I like to think a lot. And I don’t. I do not like to think at all.

Almost any biographer, if he respects facts, can give us much more than another fact to add to our collection. He can give us the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders.

Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we’re hardwired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. And the country’s scared.

We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death, the body maintains its irreparable lead.

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else’s type of thinking.

The world, we are told, was made especially for man – a presumption not supported by all the facts. A numerous class of men are painfully astonished whenever they find anything, living or dead, in all God’s universe, which they cannot eat or render in some way what they call useful to themselves.