Top 100 Hard Thinking Quotes
#1. They spend more time in analyzing, in collecting materials, and in hard thinking than on prayer, on seeking God's mind, and on waiting for the power from above.
Watchman Nee
#2. Hard knocks have a place and value, but hard thinking goes farther in less time.
Henry Ford
#3. It's hard thinking about Iraq at night when I'm dancing with transvestites in the afternoon.
Jerry Springer
#4. I felt myself swallow hard, thinking of the full glimpse I'd just gotten, and also wondering if there was a way I could suggest that he maybe stop wearing a shirt on our runs.
Morgan Matson
#5. I once believed in Jenner; I once believed in Pasteur. I believed in vaccination. I believed in vivisection. But I changed my views as the result of hard thinking.
Walter Hadwen
#6. It has been frequently said that many of the world's greatest inventions were due to accident. In a sense this is true. But the accident was prepared for by previous hard thinking. It would never have occurred had not this thinking taken place.
Henry Hazlitt
#7. Whenever I've been asked to be in a film, directors only want me to play myself ... I'm fascinated by the thought of being an actor, but it's too hard. And I think Shakespeare-which has been suggested to me-might be a bit of a stretch.
Tom Jones
#8. I'm not thinking much about overall themes or preoccupations or anything like that. Instead I'm just trusting that, if I'm working hard, various notions and riffs and motifs and so on are very naturally suffusing the stories and the resulting book.
George Saunders
#9. You just kind of go and do your own thing. Sometimes it's really hard to compare apples and oranges, so you don't really think of it that way. You just perform to your fullest potential and hope everybody else does too. And however it works out, it works out.
Jennifer Nettles
#10. I think to be successful you have to work really hard but you also have to have a little bit of luck.
Tom Petty
#11. Obviously it's very hard to leave a club that you've supported all your life. But the reason that I've come to Birmingham is that I think Steve Bruce is one of the best young managers in the country and that Birmingham as a club is a sleeping giant
David Dunn
#12. Everyone in my life thinks I'm competitive because I want to win, but it comes from me wanting everyone to have a good time. And when I see that people aren't enthused, I try to make it really uncomfortable for everyone so they get enthused and want to play hard.
Christina Applegate
#13. Quality is such an attractive banner that sometimes we think we can get away with just waving it, without doing the hard work necessary to achieve it.
Phil Crosby
#14. I love country music, but I find it very hard to take it seriously. I also think a lot of country music is sung with the tongue in cheek, so I do it tongue in cheek.
Mick Jagger
#15. If designers and researchers do not sometimes fail, it is a sign that they are not trying hard enough - they are not thinking the great creative thoughts that will provide breakthroughs in how we do things.
Donald A. Norman
#16. One function of the income gap is that the people at the top of the heap have a hard time even seeing those at the bottom. They practically need a telescope. The pharaohs of ancient Egypt probably didn't was a lot of time thinking about the people who build their pyramids, either.
Molly Ivins
#17. I wanted her. I wanted to strip her naked. I wanted to thrust into her, hard and fast, and watch her face as I did it. I wanted to know what she was thinking as my body filled hers.
Mia Sheridan
#18. This business of the working class is on its way out I think. After all, aren't I working class? I work jolly hard, I can tell you.
Margaret Thatcher
#19. Hollywood industry people are very spoiled. I don't think they can adjust to the insane, no-money, super-hard working tradition of Japanese filmmaking. I don't think any American can go through that. They don't want to work more than twelve hours and they want Saturday and Sunday off.
Ryuhei Kitamura
#20. Even though I worked hard at times, it was always magical. I have to confess I enjoyed every minute of it. Even the down times I enjoyed, because we were creating something that would make people smile and lift their hearts. You can't think of a better job than that.
Floyd Norman
#21. I was thinking back to all the time in the gym, working hard, and that spurred me on [winning New York marathon just ten months after giving birth
Paula Radcliffe
#22. Primitive, naive drawing can also be good drawing but it's hard to pull off. I don't think most submitters realize that.
Robert Mankoff
#23. A reporter once asked me if I ever cried. I wonder if people think I'm just as hard as a rock and have no emotions at all.
Diana Ross
#24. The reason why people think of programming as being hard is because you're writing down a general rule which is going to be used for lots of instances that a particular instance must process correctly.
Gerald Jay Sussman
#25. I stared hard, trying to find a pattern. Thinking if I kept looking hard enough, maybe the pieces of the world would fit back together into something I could understand.
Carol Rifka Brunt
#26. Were you in love with Emma?" I ask.
"I was hard-core obsessed," he says without thinking about it. "Not in love."
"What's the difference?"
He's about to throw a stone at ta yard light but stops. "Prison," he says, and puts the stone in his pocket.
Cath Crowley
#27. I think I work hard. I think I dedicate myself to the game and sacrifice a lot of things at a young age, and I know if I continue to do good, what I can get out of it.
Derrick Rose
#28. In a milieu of resignation, where the young men think of society as a closed room in which there are no values but the rejected rat race, ... it is extremely hard to aim at objective truth or world culture. One's own products are likely to be personal or parochial.
Paul Goodman
#29. I think that as a teenager in England, it's very hard to avoid Europe. You see Barcelona, and you see all those places as a youngster. You go there on school trips and everything, but America is like a different planet.
Simon Taylor-Davis
#30. I think I work as hard as I do now, because of a lot of lessons I've learned early on.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#31. Webster lapsed into silence. Started thinking hard. He was a smart enough bureaucrat to know if you can't beat them, you join them. You force yourself to think like they think.
Lee Child
#32. You need to take a long, hard look in the mirror and not come away thinking, "Hey, there's something wrong with this mirror."
Jon Stewart
#33. The abbreviated exam week meant that Wednesday was the last day of school for us. And all day long, it was hard not to walk around, thinking about the lastness of it all.
John Green
#34. Speaking of the motto of the New York Times, "All the news that's fit to print:" It is hard to think of any group of seven words that have aroused more newspaper controversy.
Gerald W. Johnson
#35. It is hard to find something where you can go off as much as I do in stand-up, but I think stand-up allows me that freedom where you can really go off and have a good time.
Robin Williams
#36. A photographer's art is more in his perceptions than his execution. In a painter, I think the perception is only the first step, and then you have a kind of hard road of execution.
Jay Maisel
#37. It is hard to think of another composer who so perfectly marries form and passion.
Leonard Bernstein
#38. You mustn't get me used to too many luxuries. One doesn't miss what one has never had; but it's awfully hard going without things after one has commenced thinking they are his.
Jean Webster
#39. Most people think it's all about the idea. It's not. EVERYONE has ideas. The hard part is doing the homework to know if the idea could work in an industry, then doing the preparation to be able to execute on the idea.
Mark Cuban
#40. It's hard to imagine, but we cant think of HIV/AIDS as being somebody else's story. It could be any of ours.
Rihanna
#41. I don't think you ever learn just one thing. At some point you start unlearning things. I have been working hard to unlearn everything I know.
Terry Gilliam
#42. A mathematician's work is mostly a tangle of guesswork, analogy, wishful thinking and frustration, and proof, far from being the core of discovery, is more often than not a way of making sure that our minds are not playing tricks.
Gian-Carlo Rota
#44. I don't think people understand how much hard work innovation is. That it's not just getting an idea. You really have to cross your T's and dot your I's long before you ever start on the project. I don't think people perceive that about me. I work hard.
Nolan Bushnell
#45. Don't think that you can make up for it by working twice as hard tomorrow. If you have it within your power to work twice as hard, why aren't you doing it now?
John Wooden
#46. Thinking is hard work. One can't bear burdens and ideas at the same time.
Remy De Gourmont
#48. It was a very hard play [Woman Under the Influence] to do every night. And John Cassavetes said, "Don't worry. Don't even think about it, you're right. I hadn't thought of that." He said, "Just forget it."
Gena Rowlands
#49. I think life is a wondrous thing. I'm happy to try pretty hard.
Andrew Bird
#50. Hard work is first and foremost hard, and whether or not it's ultimately rewarding is very rarely the thing you're thinking of at the moment.
Ann Patchett
#51. I think in life the key thing is just to fight really hard to make sure something survives. If it looks like you've done everything you can to avoid failure, just move forward, move on and learn from it.
Richard Branson
#52. Sometimes with certain writing, you feel like you've got to be literal, hit it hard on the nose, just to get the point across. Good writing is more subversive I think - or good scenes. They are about one thing on the page but you can make it about something completely different.
Chace Crawford
#53. We have to laugh. Life is hard and the news is often grim - you should be able to turn on NPR's Weekend Edition every week and know that we are going to make you think, make you question - and make you laugh, preferably out loud.
Rachel Martin
#54. I dated someone in the '90s who was really into Metallica, and I remember thinking at the time, 'That just sounds so heavy and hard.' But they have great ballads! Great ballads.
Hannah Simone
#55. In the Seventies and Eighties we all had our fun, and now and then we went really too far. But, ultimately, it required a certain amount of clear thinking, a lot of hard work and good make-up to be accepted as a freak.
Grace Jones
#56. Writers are socially observant. We find people endlessly fascinating, and real life is mysterious. Sometimes it's hard to stop staring at the strut and squawk of my fellow man. They can be quite inspiring. Sometimes it's hard to stop talking to them to see what in the world they're thinking.
Julianna Baggott
#57. Hoaxes are nothing new. News media isn't hard to fool. It's fun to fool and people like to mess with people. It all goes to show you that we're not all that hard to fool. I think we should just accept that and trust people anyway.
Hank Green
#58. I like actors who don't have to think too hard about what they have to do to achieve their performance.
Michel Gondry
#59. I don't think there's a limit as long as I keep my head right, don't get above myself, work hard and remember where I came from.
Daunte Culpepper
#60. It's very hard to look in the mirror. We all know this. It's much easier to have illusions about yourself. And in particular, when you think, well, I'm going to believe what I like, but I'll say what the powerful want, you do that over time, and you believe what you say.
Noam Chomsky
#61. To grow, to become spiritually alive, and vibrant, you really have to struggle. Without struggle, you do not move at all ... I would appreciate it if readers who come to my work would try very, very, very hard not to think narrowly as we are taught to think in America.
Alice Walker
#62. If you are the leader, you don't have the right to say things like "Ugh, didn't eat this week I was so busy." "Haven't slept." I look sideways at those signs of bravado, which are intended to make one feel that the person is working so hard. I don't think that way.
Scott Raab
#63. A lot of people think that success is luck and being in the right place at the right time. But I think if you're willing to work harder than anybody else, you can create an awful lot of your own luck.
Nolan Bushnell
#64. I think the hardest obstacles, actually, are probably ones I've put on myself. I push myself really hard, and I think that's why I've been able to accomplish certain things.
Amanda Crew
#65. People have a hard time reading my comics. I think I leave things out, but I feel you should.
Brian Chippendale
#67. I do think economic and social anxiety is the number one issue. And I'm pretty confident Hillary Clinton will be really riding that train pretty hard.
David Brooks
#69. It's really hard not to think too much. If I try to control the sled too much so that I have perfect lines, I'm really slow.
Katie Uhlaender
#70. Thinking is free, planning is also free, but action taking is not free; you have a price to pay. Success is not luck; it demands work ... hard work of course!
Israelmore Ayivor
#71. Sorrow itself is not so hard to bear As the thought of sorrow coming. Airy ghosts, That work no harm, do terrify us more Than men in steel with bloody purposes. Death is not dreadful; 'tis the dread of death - We die whene'er we think of it!
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
#72. The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
Bertrand Russell
#73. I don't want to try to live up to someone who's created something so incredible. I'm just trying to focus on what I'm doing and what I do best. It's sometimes hard to focus in and only think about my books rather than how they measure up to someone else's.
Veronica Roth
#74. But simplicity is not so simple to attain. Steve Jobs figured out that "you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple." The Arabs have an expression for trenchant prose: no skill to understand it, mastery to write it. Heuristics
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
#75. Sometimes the most worthwhile things are right in front of our eyes. We just make them hard because we think that gives them more value.
Karen Rose
#76. Most gods find it hard to walk and think at the same time.
Terry Pratchett
#77. When we pull away we're both breathing hard, but I don't think she's thinking about her aunt or her mom anymore. Damn I'm good.
Nyrae Dawn
#78. I shoot a lot of video, first of all, whatever I think is interesting, just my travels; hard to say why. If something looks good, I take a picture or try to shoot it.
Robert Barry
#79. Everything is so weird in politics that it's very hard to be funny about it, I think.
Tom Lehrer
#80. Really think hard about what you want to do, because when you're doing what you want to do is probably when you'll be doing your best. And pray it is not a hobby so they'll pay you for it.
Rush Limbaugh
#81. I think it's time to stop carping on the blunders of the President and give him some credit for creativity. I mean, where do you even FIND a Jewish hard-line conservative Republican pot-smoker? Sounds like an Oprah Winfrey guest.
A. Whitney Brown
#82. I think that a good person can sometimes do wrong out of ignorance or weakness or wrong thinking, but when hard times come, the goodness wins out after all. And a bad person can often seem good and trustworthy for a long time, but when hard times come, the evil in him gets revealed.
Orson Scott Card
#83. I don't think that there's a hard-and-fast deadline ... What we have said all along is that this is not an open-ended process, we are not in this just to talk for talk's sake ... We expect prompt, concrete steps to be taken over the next couple of weeks.
Barack Obama
#84. I think that you have to prepare yourself mentally for show business, because it is such a tough world. You don't realize how hard it is until you're actually in it and you're actually on the show.
Carmen Rasmusen
#85. Easy enough. I was thinking in the neighborhood of five million." She swallowed - hard - the spaghetti she'd wound around her fork. "I don't have that big a bucket, or spend much time in that neighborhood. You make it." "Done." He
J.D. Robb
#86. I think musicians like me are drawn to those older desks, not just because they're legend and lore but also because they do something really specific that is hard to emulate or re-create digitally.
Dave Grohl
#87. If you don't have time, the truth is, you don't have priorities. Think harder; don't work harder.
Tim Ferriss
#88. Simply put, if you are not doubting yourself or not thinking of other things that you could be doing instead of the task at hand, you're probably not working hard enough
Dos Remedios, Robert
#89. I think it's hard for any parent to see anything negative said or done against your child and, when you can't directly do something about it, it's hard.
Pattie Mallette
#90. We really just try not to think about the scrutiny and the pressure. We're just trying to make the show that we like, and we're working really hard at it.
Maurissa Tancharoen
#91. I know that being upset without having an avenue to fix anything is a real hard place to be in for too long. But it's even worse thinking that it'll go away if you just ignore it.
Babatunde Adebimpe
#92. Too easy to get = Just as easy to forget.
Mandy Hale
#93. It's hard to confront someone without knowing, [but] I think the first thing you should do in a relationship - any kind of relationship - is confront. Then, if they seem shady, maybe go for the email or the text message.
Chloe Grace Moretz
#94. By working hard, by making the right moves, you can create your own luck, I think. But certainly luck plays a part.
Richard Branson
#95. I think about God, yes, and I wonder if there is a God. And if there is a God, will God please help me through my hard trips.
Brian Wilson
#96. I had three sessions of chemotherapy so it was really tough, it was hard to go through it. But while I was going through my treatment, I was always motivated that I was going to come back and play for India. I think that's what kept me going and got me through.
Yuvraj Singh
#97. Pessimism is not only unwarranted, it is also a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think the cause is lost, it will be. No one works hard for a cause they think will lose.
Lawrence Reed
#98. The fear, though, is unassailable. The dark balls of dread pinball through my brain. This is what anxiety does to a brain, I know that. A barrage of intrusive, unwanted, and distressing thoughts that the person thinking them can't turn them off no matter how hard they try...
Lauren Miller
#99. People will pay exactly what things are worth give or take a few bucks. You might pay a few bucks more if you like the dealer and think the dealer will take care of you, but most people are going to the internet and don't care about that. I don't think that hard earned money is given away.
Paul Reed Smith
#100. When I wrote for TV, I was always thinking in terms of character and story. After fifteen years, it became hard-wired in me.
Maria Semple
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