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

I grew up with the biologists. I know how they think.

Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.

There should be a point to movies. Sure, you’re giving people a diversion from the cold world for a bit, but at the same time, you pass on some facts and rules and maybe a little bit of wisdom.

Facts do not speak for themselves. They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.

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

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.

There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.

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

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.

Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn’t a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.

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

Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States – old as well as new – North as well as South.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.

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.

Facts are not interesting to me.

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.

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

Sometimes if you want to get rid of the gun, you have to pick the gun up.

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.

The intersection of law, politics, and technology is going to force a lot of good thinking.

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.

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

Do countries with strong gun control laws have lower murder rates? Only if you cherry-pick the data.

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

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

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.

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.

Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.

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

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

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.

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

When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.

Guns are bad, I tell you.

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