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thinking

Thursday 22nd of October 2026

Food for thought Most people need their heads to be filled with thoughts. You are not going to feed people with some highly intellectual discourse. Most people eat simple foods.  Not the kind of food we are having tonight. Generally most people consume very simple-meaning beliefs. This is normal. There is haute cuisine, and there is McDonald's. Everyone takes advantage of such people all over the world. Vladislav Surkov, during an interview with Henry Foy, Financial Times, June 18, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Don't trust decisions made by machines that can't explain their thinking in simple terms  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Problem solving We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. Attributed to Albert Einstein © 2024 Kwiple.com
Punt returners say If the US president will only talk about things he has thoughts on, we will be hearing much less from him. Henry Mance responding to Donald Trump's statement about the Tory election campaign while in London for the 2019 NATO meeting: “It's going to be a very important election for this great country, but I have no thoughts on it.” © 2019 Kwiple.com
Punt returners say That's not enough. I need a majority.  Adlai Stevenson, responding to a supporter who called out, “Governor Stevenson, all thinking people are for you!” © 2019 Kwiple.com
Punt returners say You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think. Dorothy Parker, responding when asked to use the word “horticulture” in a sentence © 2017 Kwiple.com
Resisters say Think  before you tweet Placard, Women's March on Washington, January 21, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Selfie  I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards. Albert Einstein © 2017 Kwiple.com
Selfie I try not working backward from assumption but forward from data. Michael Hayden, former CIA and NSA director © 2018 Kwiple.com
Selfie I don't just take photographs. I think. Don McCullin © 2015 Kwiple.com
Selfie I think people think I like to think a lot. And I don't. I do not like to think at all. Kanye West © 2018 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say  I never thought anyone would ever do that © 2018 Kwiple.com
Snapshot You could walk through Ronald Reagan's deepest thoughts and not get your ankles wet. Ronald Reagan portrayed by a California legislator © 2022 Kwiple.com
Surely you jest Do I think? Yes, I think.  Donald Trump © 2017 Kwiple.com
Technology When we don't quite know what we are doing (even if we are doing it well), can we write a program that does it for us? Joel Mokyr, November 20, 2015, four months before AlphaGo, a program from Google DeepMind, won 4 out of 5 games playing against one the world's top three players of Go, a board game with simpler rules than chess but many more squares and possible moves, making winning much more dependent on recognizing inexplicable spatial patterns © 2016 Kwiple.com
Thinking For 15 minutes, the team left participants alone in a lab room in which they could push a button and shock themselves if they wanted to. The results were startling:  Even though all participants had previously stated that they would pay money to avoid being shocked with electricity, 67% of men and 25% of women chose to inflict it on themselves rather than just sit there quietly and think. Science magazine, July 3, 2014 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Thinking If you don't think too good, don't think too much. Ted Williams © 2023 Kwiple.com
Thinking Measure twice. Cut once. a carpenter's proverb © 2016 Kwiple.com
Thinking Oy vey iz mir! I'm with stupid! What Gary Cohn, Trump's chief economic adviser, and Steve Mnuchin, his Treasury Secretary, must have been thinking when being interviewed by the editors of The Economist, along with Trump, who asked the editors if they'd heard the expression “prime the pump” and then said he created it “a couple of days ago and I thought it was good” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Thinking People who lose reading skills also lose thinking skills. Their need for simplicity is met by  politicians offering “simplism”: the ideology of simple answers for complex problems.  Simplism is sold under euphemisms such as “common sense”, “moral clarity” and “telling it straight”. The chief simplist, Donald Trump, speaks at the level of a fourth-grader. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, October 19, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Thinking Questions you cannot answer are usually far better for you than answers you cannot question. Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Thinking The release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking. Albert Einstein © 2016 Kwiple.com
Thinking The team [that tested and confirmed the hypothesis that low-effort, automatic thinking promotes political conservativism] also found they could push people to the right by distracting them, putting them under time pressure or simply telling them not to think too hard. Participants who were asked to deliberate more deeply, in contrast, shifted their political thinking to the left. New Scientist, December 16, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Thinking Think before you speak. Read before you think.  Fran Lebowitz, “Tips for Teens”  © 2015 Kwiple.com
Thinking When researchers in the US loitered outside a bar in New England and asked customers about their political views, they found that the drunker the punter, the more right-wing their leanings. That wasn't because right- wing people drink more or get pissed more easily. Wherever people stood on the political spectrum when sober, alcohol shifted their views to the right. Why might that be? The researchers … pointed out that alcohol strips away complex reasoning to reveal the default state of mind. And that is why they were chatting to drunks: they were using drunkenness to test the hy- pothesis that low-effort, automatic thought promotes political conservatism. New Scientist, December 16, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Tribalism People don't work out what they think and then join the corresponding tribe. They join a tribe and infer from it what they think. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, July 21, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
< Trumpists say At one time, science said man came from apes, did it not? If that's true, why are there still apes? Think about it. Herschel Walker, March 13, 2022, while frontrunner for the Georgia Republican Senate nomination in 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Wannabe autocrats say Stick with us. Don't believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news. What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening. Donald Trump, telling veterans he and his kiss-asses are the sole source of truth about trade and other issues © 2018 Kwiple.com
 
Writing I think if you write things, you do find yourself thinking, concretely, in a way you don’t normally. You have to find concrete expression for things that have been amorphous up to that point. Writing is thinking. Michael Frayn © 2023 Kwiple.com