Broad Thinking Quotes & Sayings

I'm convinced that the best solutions are often the ones that are counterintuitive - that challenge conventional thinking - and end in breakthroughs. It is always easier to do things the same old way ... why change? To fight this, keep your dissatisfaction index high and break with tradition. Don't be too quick to accept the way things are being done. Question whether there's a better way. Very often you will find that once you make this break from the usual way - and incidentally, this is probably the hardest thing to do - and start on a new track your horizon of new thoughts immediately broadens. New ideas flow in like water. Always keep your interests broad - don't let your mind be stunted by a limited view. — Nathaniel J. Wyeth

The real issue in the Christian community was that it was conditional. You were loved, but if you had questions, questions about whether the Bible was true or whether America was a good country or whether last week's sermon was good, you were not so loved. You were loved in word, but there was, without question, a social commodity that was being withheld from you until you shaped up. By toeing the party line you earned social dollars; by being yourself you did not. If you wanted to be valued, you became a clone. These are broad generalizations, and they are unfair, but this is what I was thinking at the time. — Donald Miller

I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his society. — Henry David Thoreau

Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose, she read, and so reading she was ascending, she felt, on to the top, on to the summit. How satisfying! How restful! All the odds and ends of the day stuck to this magnet; her mind felt swept, felt clean. And then there it was, suddenly entire; she held it in her hands, beautiful and reasonable, clear and complete, here
the sonnet.
But she was becoming conscious of her husband looking at her. He was smiling at her, quizzically, as if he were ridiculing her gently for being asleep in broad daylight, but at the same time he was thinking, Go on reading. You don't look sad now, he thought. And he wondered what she was reading, and exaggerated her ignorance, her simplicity, for he liked to think that she was not clever, not book-learned at all. He wondered if she understood what she was reading. Probably not, he thought. She was astonishingly beautiful. Her beauty seemed to him, if that were possible, to increase. — Virginia Woolf

The definition of horror is pretty broad. What causes us "horror" is actually a many splendored thing (laughs). It can be hard to make horror accessible, and that's what I think Silence of the Lambs did so brilliantly - it was an accessible horror story, the villain was a monster, and the protagonist was pure of heart and upstanding so it had all of these great iconographic elements of classic storytelling. It was perceived less as a horror movie than an effective thriller, but make no mistake, it was a horror movie and was sort of sneaky that way. — Bryan Fuller

I think Joe Leiberman has been one of the leaders of the country ... people have such a broad respect for him as a moral force. — Alan Lightman

I think everybody's goal was to make something that was really broad for a big audience, which was my goal too. But my main goal was that I wanted my audience to love it, because they're the ones who are going to buy it, and they're the ones who are going to tell their friends. And I wanted to make sure that core audience was really happy, because if they all buy it we have a successful movie. — Shane Dawson

I thought that ground fire couldn't reach the zeppelins," I said. "I thought that guns on the ground didn't have the range."
"Eleanore. Do you imagine for one particle of one second that he was thinking clearly enough to fathom that?"
"He was thinking clearly enough to fathom all of this," I retorted, my hand flung out to encompass the roof. Blood stained my palm. "Clearly enough to have men haul all these crates into the castle in broad daylight all week long, so that everyone could see them and wonder what was actually inside! — Shana Abe

The nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards. — William Butler

My first big acting performance was in the Marilyn Monroe biography piece, and it required frontal nudity. I talked to Mira Sorvino, my co-star, about how nervous I was because I didn't know how my mom would react. She said, 'Can I be completely honest with you? I've seen your mom in interviews, and she seems pretty screwed up. I don't think there's much you could do to shock a broad like that.' And from that moment on it was big nipples to the wind! — Ashley Judd

A poem is a windy city, has broad shoulders
and insistent industry,
barrels into your brain, sticking
its steam-filled, swarmy head
into the delicate, empty bird cages
propped in the rooms of your imagination.
A poem can be rude, downright ignorant
of what you had been thinking about
and holding onto for too much of the day.
More than a city, a poem pushes its hemispheres
against your thoughts, knocking them out
of the windows of your ears.
Every good poem screams, 'Read me
because you're going to die someday! — B.J. Ward

I don't think the market can keep going up. In the U.S., we see real estate not going up.. houses are selling at lower prices. You can't have anything going up 10 percent to 20 percent to 30 percent indefinitely. — Eli Broad

Snapped abruptly to a realization of how rudely I had been staring, I blushed and said without thinking, "I was just wondering if you've ever been kissed by a beautiful young girl?"
I went still redder as he shouted with laughter. With a broad grin, he said "Many times, madonna. But alas, it does not help. As you see. Ribbit. — Diana Gabaldon

Unfortunately, I'm an engineer. I'm always thinking about, what's the task and how do I get it done? And some of my tasks are pretty broad, and pretty fuzzy, and pretty funky, but that's the way I think. — Michael Porter

The idea of equality is still how I define feminism. I think it's a broad definition that encompasses the variety of experiences women and men have with the word and the movement. — Julie Zeilinger

I don't think any change in the world has been more significant than the change in the status of women ... A woman's world was her home, her family, and perhaps a little community service. Today, a woman's world is as broad as the universe. — Belle S. Spafford

I think we bring together that broad coalition including Russia to help us destroy ISIS and work on a timetable to get rid of Assad, hopefully through Democratic elections. First priority, destroy ISIS. — Bernie Sanders

At Facebook we feel a lot of affinity not just for this community but for any community that is trying to do what Davos is trying to do, which is to share information. And Davos is doing it in a particular way - I think the Facebook approach is obviously more broad-based, we're trying to include everyone in the world. But the goal is the same: bring people together, to share information and make the world more connected, and have people have a deeper understanding of themselves, others, the communities of which they want to be a part and can be a part. — Sheryl Sandberg

Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. This was a definition of feminism I offered in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center more than 10 years ago. It was my hope at the time that it would become a common definition everyone would use. I liked this definition because it did not imply that men were the enemy. By naming sexism as the problem it went directly to the heart of the matter. Practically, it is a definition which implies that all sexist thinking and action is the problem, whether those who perpetuate it are female or male, child or adult. It is also broad enough to include an understanding of systemic institutionalized sexism. As a definition it is open-ended. To understand feminism it implies one has to necessarily understand sexism. — Bell Hooks

As Harvard developmental psychologist Howard Gardner reminds us, The young child is totally egocentric - meaning not that he thinks selfishly only about himself, but to the contrary, that he is incapable of thinking about himself. The egocentric child is unable to differentiate himself from the rest of the world; he has not separated himself out from others or from objects. Thus he feels that others share his pain or his pleasure, that his mumblings will inevitably be understood, that his perspective is shared by all persons, that even animals and plants partake of his consciousness. In playing hide-and-seek he will "hide" in broad view of other persons, because his egocentrism prevents him from recognizing that others are aware of his location. The whole course of human development can be viewed as a continuing decline in egocentrism.2 — Ken Wilber

You can bring truth to anything, whether it's a dance movie or an incredibly poignant indie drama or a really broad comedy. As long as you show up to play, I don't think you can go wrong. — Josh Peck

There's nothing particularly wrong with being more pessimistic than optimistic. Optimism is broad-based, non-detail-oriented thinking; pessimism is detail-oriented thinking. — David Rakoff

In the world outside this glass room, songbirds are feeding and resting in the trees. Some will take off tonight and not land until they reach Venezuela. Sandpipers, plovers, and broad-winged hawks have already left for Patagonia and Panama. Bats are headed for caves in Kentucky and Tennessee. Out in the Atlantic, humpback whales pass by on their way to the Caribbean. Even now, Canada geese are honking toward us from Quebec. It is a good day for the beginnings of journeys.Every time I look at you, I think, Now I cannot die. — Sandra Steingraber

The voice-over world has changed radically in the time that I've been in it. It used to be this rather small, select group of people who did 90 percent of the work. Now it's kind of the reverse: 90 percent of the work is done by this very broad mix of people all over the country, and the guys who used to be the go-to guys are a much smaller percentage now. But there was this massive interest in voice-over as well as in the story, so I think that also added to the film's appeal. — Fred Melamed

I think within a year or so, perhaps, if 9/11 had not happened, in Afghanistan would have been a very broad-based general uprising against the Taliban. — Ahmed Rashid

To me, unconventional thinking is approaching a problem and asking, 'Why not? Why can't something be done?' If someone can't give me a good reason why you can't do something, I find a way to do it. — Eli Broad

He loves her. Circumstances and considerations - what are those? The whole world recedes and there is room for only one thought: he loves her. She had not misunderstood him. She is not an eccentric and a burden. He has been thinking of her as she has of him. Above her bed the broad fins whirl gently; the night will pass and the morning will come and he loves her. — Ahdaf Soueif

I have a broad view that we have to try and get to "yes" on projects. On economic projects anybody can say no. My child can say no. But I think the hard thing to do is to figure out how you get to "yes" and you protect the environment. — Christy Clark

I don't have an agenda. I don't have things I want to get to or something. I have like a broad, slim grasp of certain periods and certain shows within that period, an awareness of them, but they demand re-listening. I have a flimsy grasp of all the eras and ideas within each period of what would be a good show to think of. — Dick Latvala

He was standing apart from the others, a dark, brooding figure concealed in shadows.
Jacob Stone was a man who was at home in shadows.
Ever since Emily had first become aware of his existence five years ago, she had understood that he prowled the fringes of her family's world. He was part bodyguard, part troubleshooter and, to Emily's way of thinking, part enforcer for Ravenscroft International. Like the last of the lobo wolves, he was rarely seen in broad daylight, let alone in the firm's executive suites or at its glittering social functions. And the only times he had been invited into her father's private study were on those occasions when Emily had needed rescuing from her latest predicament. — Jayne Ann Krentz

TV can reach broad audiences, mass audiences, niche audiences; it can be local, regional, national; it can be spots, sponsorship, interactive. It can be anything you want it to be. I tend to think of TV as the Swiss Army knife of media, it's got something for everybody. — Nick Manning

I think the tendency to paint composers or styles of music with too broad a brush - for example, identifying composers as writers of "simple" or "complex" music - has become increasingly problematic and is almost never productive. — Michael Hersch

The Soviet transition to a new political structure shows that the Soviet strategists are thinking, planning and acting in broad terms, way beyond the imagination of Western politicians. For this reason Western politicians cannot grasp the fact that the Soviet intention is to win by 'democratic' means. Through transition to a new system, the Soviets are revitalising their own people and institutions, and they are succeeding. Contrary to Western belief, they are holding their ranks together. — Anatoliy Golitsyn

I am told by others that I have a lateral-thinking, broad approach to problems, sometimes to my detriment. In school, my grades always suffered because I was continually mucking about with irrelevant side issues, which I often found to be more interesting. — Barry Marshall

Now I do not myself share that superstitious reverence for the beliefs of common sense which many contemporary philosophers profess. But I think that we must start from them, and that we ought to depart from them only when we find good reason to do so. — C. D. Broad

Communists must never separate themselves from the majority of the people or neglect them by leading only a few progressive contingents in an isolated and rash advance, but must take care to forge close links between the progressive elements and the broad masses. This is what thinking in terms of the majority means. — Mao Zedong

The fact that we can't see the beauty in something doesn't suggest that it's not there. Rather, it suggests that we are not looking carefully enough or with a broad enough perspective to see it. — Richard Carlson

I think you still have a problem here when you're going and you're looking not just that Trump is winning, but he's winning in a broad swath of voters. It's not just that he's got this one lane, oh, he only wins when there's low turnout, he only wins when conservatives, he only wins in these kinds of states. He wins enough across a broad array. — Amy Walter

The heroism of the average mother. Ah! When I think of that broad fact, I gather hope again for poor humanity; and this dark world looks bright ... because, whatever else it is not full of, it is at least full of mothers. — Charles Kingsley

I try to absorb all types of style and design. I don't try and restrict my thinking. I enjoy the old and the new. You need that broad perspective to create something different. — Chad Hurley

The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards. — William Francis Butler

Have you ever noticed that? We base our assessment of the intelligence of others almost entirely on how closely their thinking matches our own. I'm sure that there are people out there who violently disagree with me on most things, and I'm broad-minded enough to conceded that they might possibly not be completely idiots, but I much prefer the company of people who agree with me.
You might want to think about that. — David Eddings

Call him!" echoed Barnaby, sitting upright upon the floor, and staring vacantly at Gabriel, as he thrust his hair back from his face. "But who can make him come! He calls me, and makes me go where he will. He goes on before, and I follow. He's the master, and I'm the man. Is that the truth, Grip?" The raven gave a short, comfortable, confidential kind of croak; - a most expressive croak, which seemed to say, "You needn't let these fellows into our secrets. We understand each other. It's all right." "I make him come!" cried Barnaby, pointing to the bird. "Him, who never goes to sleep, or so much as winks! - Why, any time of night, you may see his eyes in my dark room, shining like two sparks. And every night, and all night too, he's broad awake, talking to himself, thinking what he shall do to-morrow, where we shall go, and what he shall steal, and hide, and bury. I make him come! Ha, ha, ha! — Charles Dickens

While primarily a photographer, I do not see or think photographically; hence the story of Indian life will not be told in microscopic detail, but rather will be presented as a broad and luminous picture. — Edward S. Curtis

In the broad sense design means thinking about what the function or purpose of things or processes are, and translating that into action. — Howard Rheingold

I think people are too often misinformed and, in some cases, deceived. We don't have a full marketplace of ideas in this country that in any way reflects the broad, real range of ideas. — Katrina Vanden Heuvel

What is actually observed in so-called 'biplar children'? If you read the research reports carefully, they describe broad and persistent emotional dysregulation. Although these children have mood swings, they do not develop manic or hypomanic episodes. They are moody, irritable, oppositional and likely to misbehave - like all children with disruptive behavior disorders. Their grandiose thinking usually consists of little beyond boastfulness. No evidence from genetics, neurobiology, follow-up studies or treatment response shows that this syndrome has anything in common with classical bipolarity. — Joel Paris

I have been a biologist for a long time, and I hope I never stop getting shivers in my spine when I think about the beauty of how we come to know things in biology. Biologists make predictions, then they go out into the field or the lab to see if their predictions hold up. When hundreds of predictions of this sort are fulfilled, a theory reaches the point where it becomes certain, at least on a broad level. And that is where we are with evolution. — Darrel R. Falk

All people of broad, strong sense have an instinctive repugnance to the men of maxims; because such people early discern that the mysterious complexity of our life is not to be embraced by maxims, and that to lace ourselves up in formulas of that sort is to repress all the divine promptings and inspirations that spring from growing insight and sympathy. And the man of maxims is the popular representative of the minds that are guided in their moral judgment solely by general rules, thinking that these will lead them to justice by a ready-made patent method, without the trouble of exerting patience, discrimination, impartiality, without any care to assure themselves whether they have the insight that comes from a hardly-earned estimate of temptation, or from a life vivid and intense enough to have created a wide fellow-feeling with all that is human. — George Eliot

I think the most important CEO task is defining the course that the business will take over the next five or so years. You have to have the ability to see what the business environment might be like a long way out, not just over the coming months. You need to be able to both set a broad direction, and also to take particular decisions along the way that make that broad direction unfold correctly. — Chris Corrigan

If we are to have broad-thinking men and women of high mentality, of good physique and with a true perspective on life, we must allow our populace a communion with nature in areas of more or less wilderness condition. — Arthur Carhart

The spectrum on the list is very broad. It includes leftists who think that whiny liberals should be stuffed in a sack and drowned. — Alan Bradley

I tried to fit it in with some previous broad conceptual understanding of some part of mathematics that would clarify the particular problem I was thinking about. — Andrew Wiles

Some broad themes brought me where I am today. At a very young age, my hobby became thinking and finding connections. — Dean Kamen

I try to consider each body of work on its own terms, discretely, so terms like 'sculpture' or 'photography', in their broad sense, don't really enter into my thinking. — Walead Beshty

When you think of H&M, you're thinking of something that's accessible to a broad range of people, perhaps far broader than most of these beautiful shows. — Hari Nef

If you're doing something in the city, then hopefully you're speaking to somebody who has an open mind who is walking by. And you're also speaking to a community of other people who do similar types of work. I like to think that the outdoor community is broad and able and open for anybody to see. — Margaret Kilgallen

Then it is in me, too, the psychotic streak. A psychotic world we live in. The madmen are in power. How long have we known this? Faced this? And-how many of us do know it? ... Perhaps if you know you are insane then you are not insane. Or you are becoming sane, finally. Waking up. I suppose only a few are aware of all this. Isolated persons here and there. But the broad masses-what do they think? All these hundreds of thousands in this city, here. Do they imagine that they live in a sane world? Or do they guess, glimpse, the truth ... ? — Philip K. Dick

Scientists still know very little about how the olfactory cortex in the brain converts impulses from receptors into conscious senses of smell. But Harry wasn't thinking so much about the hows, he just knew that when he smelled her, all sorts of things started happening in his head and body. Like his eyelids closing halfway, like his mouth spreading into a broad grin and his mood soaring. — Jo Nesbo

It's living - a broad spectrum of living - that teaches you how to live, not philosophy. Philosophy teaches you how to think. — Ruth Rendell

Advertising is far more than just a communications industry. It's a problem-solving industry that also teaches you about life, how it encourages you to focus your thinking and produce something of genuine value. Why? Because that will make the advertising task so much easier. You're not equipped with a unique set of insights and experiences across a broad range of markets, allowing you to bring clarity and inspiration to anything you wish to produce. — John Hegarty

I think that the definition of autism is too broad. You got to remember, autism definition is a behavioral profiling. — Temple Grandin

I think of a myth as a story that helps you explain all the different pieces of your life. In that broad sense, there is no way to live without mythology. — Lewis Hyde

Acting is broad enough a church that you can pick your races, decide which way you want to go at different times.I think that the story and circumstance tends to dictate the most and then what you do with your own approach after that. — Ben Mendelsohn

He lay still for a while, alone in the silent house, remembering the night before, what that had been like, wondering what might be starting. Thinking did he want it to start, and what if he did. Late in the afternoon he called her. You doing all right? he said. Yes, aren't you? Yes, I am. Good. I enjoyed myself, he said. You think you'd like to get together again sometime? You're not suggesting an actual date, are you? Maggie said. In broad daylight? I don't know what you'd call it, Guthrie said. I'm just saying I'd be willing to take you out for supper at Shattuck's and invest in a hamburger. To see how that would go down. When were you thinking of doing that? Right now. This evening. Give me fifteen minutes to get ready, she said. He hung up and went upstairs and put on a clean shirt and entered the bathroom and brushed his teeth and combed his hair. He looked at himself in the mirror. You don't deserve it, he said aloud. Don't ever even begin to think that you do. — Kent Haruf

Contemporary art challenges us.. it broadens our horizons. It asks us to think beyond the limits of conventional wisdom. — Eli Broad

I don't think education is about centralized instruction anymore; rather, it is the process [of] establishing oneself as a node in a broad network of distributed creativity. — Joichi Ito

The heart becomes wide by forgetting self, but narrow by thinking of the self and pitying one's self. To gain a wide and broad heart you must have something before you to look upon, and to rest your intelligence upon - and that something is the God-ideal. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

Listen, if I heard shrieks and cries coming from a house and I ran in there and I found a great big broad shouldered whiskey soaked Joe weasel, dragging his wife about by the hair, and over here, two children are unconscious from his blows and kicks and another one screaming in terror, do you think I would apologize for being there? No! I'd knock 7 kinds of pork out of that old hog. — Billy Sunday

The total subject of mathematics is clearly too broad for any of us. I do not think that any mathematician since Gauss has covered it uniformly and fully; even Hilbert did not and all of us are of considerably lesser width quite apart from the question of depth than Hilbert. — John Von Neumann

One of the reasons I like to hang out with scholarly types is they can do a broad reach conceptualization of things that is astonishing to me. I'm really good at the particulars but I have to do an immense amount of critical thinking to make something larger of it. — Lucy Corin

Tell me, you vain professor, when did you shed a tear for the deadness, hardness, unbelief, or earthliness of your heart? Do you think that such an easy religion can save you? If so, we may invert Christ's words and say, 'Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to life, and may there be that go in there.' — John Flavel

At the end of the day, I think that music lovers are going to love me. I think the pop songs that are on my album will be loved by the pop listeners and the R&B songs will be loved by the R&B people. I think that each song has a broad enough sound that I won't be pigeon holed. At the same time I think it is appealing to many different audiences. — Chrisette Michele

What plan of action? What can be done? We can't fight the whole society."
"I was thinking we could use you as bait and draw them into a trap," Gregori said, straight-faced.
Gary's eyes widened in alarm. "I'm not sure I like that plan. Sounds a little risky to me." He looked at Savannah for support.
Gregori shrugged his broad shoulders in a casual shrug. "I do not see a risk."
Savannah's small clenched fist thumped his stomach in retaliation. Gregori glanced down at her with surprise. "Is this when I am supposed to say ouch?"
Savannah and Gary exchanged a long, mournful groan. "Why did I want him to have a sense of humor?" she wondered.
Gary shook his head. "Don't be asking me. You created the monster. — Christine Feehan

You'll find out it's little savors and little things that count more than big ones. A walk on a spring morning is better than an eighty-mile ride in a hopped-up car, you know why? Because it's full of flavors, full of a lot of things growing. You've time to seek and find. I know, you're after the broad effect now, I suppose that's fit and proper. But you got to look at grapes as well as watermelons. You greatly admire skeletons and I like fingerprints; well, and good. Right now such things are bothersome to you, and I wonder if it isn't because you never learned to use them. If you had your way you'd pass a law to abolish all the little jobs, the little things. But then you'd leave yourselves nothing to do between the big jobs and you'd have a devil of a time thinking up things? Cutting grass and pulling weeds can be a way of life. — Ray Bradbury

Our supportfor assault weapons ban is very broad ... I think we've got all the police, we have all the mayors virtually - the conference of mayors, mayors against guns. We have medical experts, we have virtually dozens of religious organizations of every creed supporting us. We have just lists and lists. — Dianne Feinstein

Cristofer did not write because he feared forgetting something. He never forgot anything, even when he reached old age. For Cristofer, the written word seemed to regulate the world. Stop its fluctuations. Prevent notions from eroding. This is why Cristofer's sphere of interest was so broad. According to the writer's thinking, that sphere should correspond to the world's breadth.

Cristofer usually left his writings in the places where he had made them: on the bench, on the stove, on the woodpile. He did not pick them up when the fell to the floor: he vaguely anticipated their discovery, much later, in a cultural stratum. Cristofer understood that the written word would always remain that way. No matter what happened later, once it had been written, the word had already occurred. — Evgenij Vodolazkin

When you are producing for ABC, you are producing for a big tent network. So when you are thinking about your story lines and characters, you are thinking about broad appeal. When you are producing for a niche interest, you are producing for a different audience. — Anne Sweeney