Quotes & Sayings About Provoking Thought

Before you bombed my boy Osama I always thought an explosion was such a quick thing but now I know better. The flash is over very fast but the fire catches hold inside you and the noise never stops ... I live in an inferno where you could shiver with cold Osama. This life is a deafening roar but listen. You could hear a pin drop. — Chris Cleave

One can do without solutions. Only the questions matter. We may share them or turn away from them. — Elie Wiesel

A superior brain without the saving essence of godliness may turn against the human race and drench the world in blood, or worse, it may loose ideas into the earth which will continue to curse mankind for centuries after it has turned to dust again. — A.W. Tozer

We're authors, too," Donegan said, "and we've been trying to get into the picture-book market. We have this idea for a Where's Wally type thing, except in ours, you'd have to find the one living person hiding in among all the dismembered corpses while the chainsaw-wielding killer hunts him down. You know, for kids."
"We're going to call is Save the Survivor," Gracious said. — Derek Landy

The technological man is limited as his tools. The man without technologies is limitless. — Bilal Hussain

Great Question Are:
Quintessential
Unforgettable
Expressive
Stimulating
Thought Provoking
Impactful
Open Ended
Neutral
Significant — Farshad Asl

Consciousness is only possible through change; change is only possible through movement. — Aldous Huxley

We would do well to ask ourselves the kind of fundamental questions posed by [Buruma's] erudite and thought-provoking book. — Jonathan Sumption

What a man does not know is greater than he. — Chinua Achebe

Jerusalem Maiden is a page-turning and thought-provoking novel. Extraordinary sensory detail vividly conjures another time and place; heroine Esther Kaminsky's poignant struggle transcends time and place. The ultimate revelation here: for many women, if not most, 2011 is no different than 1911, but triumph is nonetheless possible. — Binnie Kirshenbaum

As the generalization goes about the art industry, people can be really challenging and thought-provoking in their thinking and questioning the status quo, and it's really important that the status quo can be questioned and that there are people doing that. — Lily Cole

People sometimes forget how to be happy due to a failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you. And only in a story could you enter these different minds and show how they had an equal footing. That was the only moral a story must have. — Ian McEwan

When I asked her if she was afraid to fall in love, she damn near doubled over. "Afraid? My heart has been through hell and back. Yet it never quits, refuses to rest, gives without asking in return, and is deeper than the deepest sea. It's love, my dear, that should fear me." That night my heart was signed, by my one of a kind. — J. Raymond

Don't fall in love with me. Not unless you're ready for a God damn fight. I don't do fragility, or friction and fairy tales. I want you to be irrational because I'm irrational. Be bold. Speak your mind. I want your wildfires and obscenities. I want your passion and priorities. Protect what's yours. I'll defend what's ours. Let us fight against routines and bad habits, and anything typical. And don't you dare quit. Not on us, not on yourself. God help the person who threatens us. Forgive me when I let you down, but don't overlook it, or allow it. We're all insecure about something. Show me yours. We're all terrified sometimes. Turn to me. People come in and out of my life so often and easily that I just look for a love that stays. I don't mind your blemishes or scars, I have a few of my own. Don't be another flash in the pan. Falling for me will be easy. Staying with me will be impossible. But you deserve a love that most people don't believe in anymore. — J. Raymond

I'm fighting alone, every day. I fight with the hell that I survived. I fight with the fact of my own humanity. I fight with the idea that death is the only way of escaping this fact. — Han Kang

The tape measures and weighing scales of the Victorian brain scientists have been supplanted by powerful neuroimaging technologies, but there is still a lesson to be learned from historical examples such as these. State-of-the-art brain scanners offer us unprecedented information about the structure and working of the brain. But don't forget that, once, wrapping a tape measure around the head was considered modern and sophisticated, and it's important not to fall into the same old traps. As we'll see in later chapters, although certain popular commentators make it seem effortlessly easy, the sheer complexity of the brain makes interpreting and understanding the meaning of any sex differences we find in the brain a very difficult task. But the first, and perhaps surprising, issue in sex differences research is that of knowing which differences are real and which, like the intially promising cephalic index, are flukes or spurious. — Cordelia Fine

...Dickey Perrott, you Jago whelp, look at them - look hard. Some day if you are clever - cleverer than anyone in the Jago right now - if you're only scoundrel enough, and brazen enough, and lucky enough - one of a thousand - maybe you'll be like them: bursting with high living, drunk when you like, red and pimply. There it is - that's your aim in life - there's your pattern. Learn to read and write, learn all you can, learn cunning, spare nobody and stop at nothing, and perhaps - It's the best the world has for you, for the Jago's got you, and that's the only way out, except gaol and the gallows. So do your devil most, or God help you, Dicky Perrot - though he wont: for the Jago's got you! — Arthur Morrison

Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled This could change your life. — Helen Exley

I like my films to have a certain amount of realism - something that's thought provoking and intelligently written. More than the amount on the pay cheque, I look for a level of respectability as an actor. — Arjun Rampal

In Sarajevo and in Syria, these are societies - in Bosnia, in Serbia, in Kosovo, in Syria - where ethnicities live side by side and intermarry for long periods of time until it becomes valuable to exploit the division. And yes, the division's there because you can always revert back to history, you can always inflame it, but it is manipulated for political ends. — Anne-Marie Slaughter

Each of us can work to change a small portion of events. And it's in the total of all those acts that the history of this generation will be written. — Jacqueline Novogratz

Jack Bogle's passionate cry of Enough! contains a thought-provoking litany of life lessons regarding our individual roles in commerce and society. Employing a seamless mix of personal anecdotes, hard evidence and all-too-often-underrated subjective admonitions, Bogle challenges each of us to aspire to become better members of our families, our professions and our communities. Rarely do so few pages provoke so much thought. Read this book. — David F. Swensen

We have control over our prayer life, our relationship with Jesus. — Francis Chan

While she lay there with these old worn thoughts coming obediently into her mind, called there by habit and the familiar quiet of early morning, she was aware that at the back of her mind there was another thought that was not at all stale, but so fresh that it was nearly a feeling, with all a feeling's delicious power to kill thought. — Stella Gibbons

Every villain is a hero in his own mind. — Tom Hiddleston

Ambitious and thought-provoking, Higher Education in America represents an informed and informative addition to ongoing debates at the national, state, and institutional levels about the aims higher education ought to aspire to and how best to achieve them. — David M. Brown

Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches! — Chinua Achebe

Nobody is born with a style or a voice. We don't out of the womb knowing who we are. In the beginning, we learn by pretending to be our heroes. We learn by copying. — Austin Kleon

Why spend your whole life on the high seas looking for treasure,' Peter asked, talking to the clouds as he scaled a rope up what remained of the half-crumbled mast, 'when you could have a promised pay check in exchange for all the life you'd live between nine-and-five. — Audrey Greathouse

Well, you can't throw heavy, analytical, thought-provoking songs at people 24/7. It's been my experience over the last 20 years that on a rare occasion, in a live setting, if you can slow people down to listen to two good ballads, then you're doing pretty good. Then throw a tempo at 'em. Then have fun. — Ronnie Dunn

Live My Life provides a much needed shot of timely, thought-provoking, musically forward, irreverence to the status quo, — Nomi Prins

Perfection can be a fetish — Bernard Leach

In the last resort, a love of God without love of humanity is no love at all. — Hans Kung

Because the man who stood there before us was not our father. He was somebody else, a stranger who had been sent back in our father's place. That's not him, we said to our mother, That's not him, but our mother no longer seemed to hear us ... "Did you ... she said. "Every day," he replied. Then he got down on his knees and he took us into his arms ... — Julie Otsuka

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We all want to feel needed, and we also want to be with people who can manage on their own, if needbe. — Sara Eckel

If I stood you in front of a man, pressed the cold metal of a gun into your palm and told you to squeeze the trigger, would you do it?'
'No, sir.'
'Are you sure?'
'Of course, sir. No ways!'
'What if I then told you we'd gone back in time and his name was Adolf Hitler? Would you do it then? Would you? — Jason Wallace

If people can't stand being alone, they have no choice but to die — Natsuo Kirino

I try to make things interesting and thought-provoking. — Charlie Kaufman

I once had a drinking contest with an artist on his yacht... It amused him as I took shot after shot, and I realized that this was the reason he'd invited us, his amusement. Looking back, I thought he didn't expect we'd have anything to say, that my questions about the artist's purpose, his existential quest for self in a communally-brutalized past, were not as amusing as they were thought-provoking, but I'll never know. As I swayed like a sailor in drunken bitterness, I felt something had been sacrificed to his art. He'd gone so far out on that boat there was no way for him to come back. I felt he no longer existed and was just the faded intention of color on canvas. His humanity had surely been washed away with the paint thinner. — Megan Rich

As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap the joy of love. — Pythagoras

I have been quiet today because fear in my heart has been fighting with frustration in my brain, leaving little energy for my mouth. — Camron Wright

Rian Johnson's 'Looper' is inventive, entertaining, and thought-provoking in every way a movie can be. It is in fact the kind of movie that reminds us why we watch them and make them, a beautifully told story that deserves to be not only remembered, but acknowledged for its writing. — Jason Reitman

Look after your laundry, and your soul will look after itself. — W. Somerset Maugham

The Playtex Secrets survey truly uncovered some thought-provoking and provocative secrets of real American housewives. In fact, many of the findings would make great fodder for a storyline on the show! — Alfre Woodard

She said, "Do you have more things that you need, or more that you don't need?" I said, "It depends on what it means to need. — Jonathan Safran Foer

A jellyfish, if you watch it long enough, begins to look like a heart beating. It doesn't matter what kind: the blooded Atolla with its flashing siren lights, the frilly flower hat variety, or the near-transparent moon jelly, Aurelia aurita. It's their pulse, the way they contract swiftly, than release. Like a ghost heart-- a heart you can see right through, right into some other world where everything you ever lost as gone to hide.
Jellyfish don't even have hearts, of course-- no heart, no brain, no bone, no blood. But watch them for a while. You will see them beating. — Ali Benjamin

Don't give yourself a limit and you may discover you don't have one. — Veronica Blade

You've got to do some work now. Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue. Virtue is about moral excellence. — Francis Chan

My life is like an O Henry story ... the funniest girl in the world and the boy who never laughs. — Rainbow Rowell

The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armor against Fate.
Death lays his icy hand on kings ... — James Shirley

In order for one to be converted to the 'dark' side he/she must have a complete understanding of the 'light' side With it's understanding we all would want to defy, overpower, or destroy what it is capable of. — Anonymous

The time for us to begin innovating and looking for new solutions is now. — Jacqueline Novogratz

Each new power won by man is a power over man as well. Each advance leaves him weaker as well as stronger. — C.S. Lewis

Some people might enjoy drain water if they were told it was vodka. — Flannery O'Connor

But the fantasy kingdom and trappings of success soon lost their luster, as I discovered that the most prestigious and remunerative of my resume's way stations was also the most tedious and unfulfilling I had ever experienced. This paradox only made me more morose about modernity. Why was I going to watch my hairline recede in front of two-thousand-line spreadsheets staring at me from cold, glowing monitors? Why was everyone in my office apparently so happy to be spending so many hours there, when the things they really cared about - people, pets, pastimes - were all relegated to a few photographs on their desks? That seemed to be the formula: spend the best years of your life in an office with photos of what you really care about. — Zack Love

Normal people can become very annoying if put in annoying situations. — Jessica Park

WAR CHILD is the true story of Magdalena (Leni) Janic whose name appears on The Welcome Wall at Sydney's Darling Harbour. The story spans 100 years starting in pre WWII Nazi Germany and ends in the suburbs of Adelaide. It's a window into what life was like for a young illegitimate German girl growing up in poverty, coping with ostracism, bullying, abuse and dispossession as society was falling down around her and she becomes a refugee. But it's also a story of a woman's unconditional love for her family, the sacrifices she made and secrets she kept to protect them. Her ultimate secret was only revealed in a bizarre twist after her death and much to her daughter's (and author) surprise involved her. A memorable tear-jerker! A sad cruel story told with so much love. — Annette Janic

Even the finest sword plunged into salt water will eventually rust. — Sun Tzu

We have different experiences, but trans women have experiences that do parallel with the whole fabric of what womanhood is. Embracing trans women, listening to their stories, enriches what womanhood is. It expands it and makes it even better. — Janet Mock

I'd rather be an optimist and a fool than a pessimist and right. — Albert Einstein

Either way, Grayson found it ironic how such dissimilar circumstances, colleges, and mental hospitals, had led to the same awful apartment. — Dorothy McFalls

With wisdom comes responsibility. Somewhere along the way, I misplaced both. — I.E. Castellano

Don't fall into the trap of studying the Bible without doing what it says. — Francis Chan

As long as there's life, there's hope. — Tamora Pierce

But only a leper shows its sins to the world. — Alan Rawlings

An entire aisle of cereal...hundreds of choices....Of course I had eaten cereal before. I'm not a savage....Cereal was a small, affordable luxury. An effort. A point of pride. Something special....Those crates of cereal meant that we deserved what others do not.... Here the choices that stand before me in the store aisles seem to exist only to mock me. Cereal isn't a luxury...the boxes laugh at me...Two aisles down I count 27 varieties of peanut butter....it is really necessary? — J.C. Carleson

Coincidence is the word we use when we can't see the levers and pulleys. — Emma Bull

What was behind this smug presumption that what pleased you was bad or at least unimportant in comparison to other things? ...
Little children were trained not to do "just what they liked' but ... but what? ... Of course! What others liked. And which others? Parents, teachers, supervisors, policemen, judges, officials, kings, dictators. All authorities.
When you are trained to despise "just what you like" then, of course, you become a much more obedient servant of others - a good slave. When you learn not to do "just what you like" then the System loves you. — Robert M. Pirsig

Dave gazed at Melanie like Professor Brian Cox eyeing up a particularly thought-provoking mountain range. — Dave Turner

The people who believe themselves superior to you will reveal themselves in how they respond to criticism from you. An opinion of anyone carries as much weight as whatever value that person's social currency has. A poor man spouting words more thought provoking than plato would not be credit for his prudence for his social currency and not his wisdom decides the value of his life. — Crystal Evans

People really don't want handouts, that they want to make their own decisions. — Jacqueline Novogratz

The stories themselves aren't what moves him now ... What moves him are the shadowy people behind the stories, the workers weary from their days, gathering at night in front of a comforting bit of fire ... The world then was no less terrifying than it is now, with our nightmares of bombs and disease and technological warfare. Anything held the ability to set of fear ... a nail dropped in a the hay, wolves circling at the edge of the woods ... — Lauren Groff

The desperate resilience,the annoyed flamboyance;his personable passivity and his phobic aggressiveness; all trapped in the clever wrinkles of his fingers, the hard unsociable cast of his knuckles, the safe hopelessness of the pads. — Brandon Shire

But what Jamie was saying just mixed it all up, selfish and selfless. I wasn't even sure what the words meant anymore. or if it was possible to be one without the other. — Phoebe Kitanidis

If they'd given her a proper time machine, she probably would have used it to cuddle with him. Let somebody else kill Hitler. — Rainbow Rowell

Dwell on positive thoughts! — Lailah Gifty Akita

She persisted when I resisted. And thank God for that. Because the number of storms I needed to go through before appreciating the way the wind whipped through her hair was one to many. Now, I'd move mountains to make her mine. Rain or shine. — J. Raymond

We choose our next world through what we learn in this one. Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as this one, all the same limitations and lead weights to overcome. — Richard Bach

Traditional charity and aid are never going to solve the problems of poverty. — Jacqueline Novogratz

And listening to all the things they would do if they had these things, Wang Lung heard only of how much they would eat and sleep, and of what dainties they would eat that they had never tasted,and how they would gamble in this great tea shop and in that, and what pretty women they would buy for their lust, and above all, how none would ever work again, even as they rich man behind the wall never worked. — Pearl S. Buck

I wondered if all a person could hope for was illusion and luck, for I was forced to conclude that the world was fundamentally and appallingly dangerous. It is a lesson I will never forget. — Charlotte Rogan

We pick the people who populate our personal lives as much for who they make us as for who they are. I chose Anna for the person I became in her presence, and in this respect, my love for her was a more selfish one — Zack Love

I am going to shrink and shrink until I am a dry fall leaf, complete with a translucent spine and brittle veins, blowing away in a stiff wind, up, up, up into a crisp blue sky. — Julie Gregory

Camera's are everywhere, the walls have eyes the sidewalks have eyes. Nothing completely happens without someone knowing about it. — Ricky Star

Achieving meaningful goals requires that you commit your entire ass, not just one cheek. — Steve Pavlina

You're stressing too much about what might be. Do something to take your mind off thinking about what might never happen. — Simone Elkeles

Each generation exercises power over its successors: and each, in so far as it modifies the environment bequeathed to it and rebels against tradition, resists and limits the power of its predecessors. — C.S. Lewis

But I've strayed so far from normal now, I'll never find my way back. And the truth is, I no longer want to. — Alyson Noel

I think it's meant to be thought provoking, said Cinder. Iko frowned, looking unprovoked. They — Marissa Meyer

There are lots of great movies coming out of the U.S. but it's not something I've ever really been interested in. They're great films but I much prefer the smaller independent films, which are more thought provoking and experimental. — Billie Piper

I was going to save the world, and I thought I would start with the African continent. — Jacqueline Novogratz

This is how everything should end: with the forgotten remembered, the wounded healed, and the sinners forgiven. — Jenny Hollowell

Very small investments can release the infinite potential that lies in all of us. — Jacqueline Novogratz

I was well aware of her ghosts. I'd met them, once or twice, during her darkness nights. "I knew you were my one when you wouldn't run," she said. How could I? Of course I stayed, when her ghosts scared my own away. What others were too afraid to see, meant everything to me. — J. Raymond

Call it professional interest. You see, Jessamine, love is a kind of poison; one of my favorite kinds, in fact. It infects the blood; it takes over the mind; it seizes dominion over the body. It amuses me to think of him pining for you. Aching for what he cannot have. The loneliness in his soul is festering like a wound. There is nothing I could do for him that is worse that what you have already done, my lovely. And I assure you, in his case there will be no cure. — Maryrose Wood

Some pasts exist as a fog that rolls in and out of the present, formed not by air that condenses into mist but memories that condense into tiny doors that open to forgotten moments. Maybe you glance at a stranger on a crowded street who reminds you of a childhood friend or hear a song that was popular the first summer you fell in love, and in the space of that single beat of time you are flung backward to a who or when long past. And yet it is only for that one beat. Those tiny doors never remain open for long for most of us. They ensure our former times are kept as relics, and the dust upon them is wiped clean only occasionally — Billy Coffey

Man sees what he knows, not what he sees

Short story, The Mallard — S.L. Northey

Jesus asks for everything, but we try to give Him less. — Francis Chan

Are you one of those people who notices the problems of the world and says ... somebody ought to do something about that? Why not you? If you feel a strong urge to see a problem fixed, then why not act on it? — Steve Pavlina

If your strengths don't, then your weakness's will soon define you. — Sachin Kumar Puli