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I half remember a quote by some ancient Greek philosopher about thoughts being like birds and the art of thinking being having the right bird/thought come when you need/call it.

I can't find that quote other than ChatGPT saying that Epictetus mused that we need to decide which bird/thought to nurture. But that notion doesn't quite match what I'm thinking of and I can't even find that anywhere else.

What's the quote (if I'm not completely misremembering it) and who said it?

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I think you're looking for Plato's Theaetetus. Look for the metaphor of the aviary, maybe a third of the way down the dialog. The passage you're looking for may be this one:

SOCRATES: Then shall we say that about names we care nothing?—any one may twist and turn the words 'knowing' and 'learning' in any way which he likes, but since we have determined that the possession of knowledge is not the having or using it, we do assert that a man cannot not possess that which he possesses; and, therefore, in no case can a man not know that which he knows, but he may get a false opinion about it; for he may have the knowledge, not of this particular thing, but of some other;—when the various numbers and forms of knowledge are flying about in the aviary, and wishing to capture a certain sort of knowledge out of the general store, he takes the wrong one by mistake, that is to say, when he thought eleven to be twelve, he got hold of the ring-dove which he had in his mind, when he wanted the pigeon.

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I know this quote isn't ancient and isn't an exact fit, but the question reminded me of something I once read from 1800s preacher Charles Spurgeon which has stuck with me, comparing thoughts to birds:

Every minister ought to read Matthew Henry entirely and carefully through once at least. I should recommend you to get through it in the next twelve months after you leave college. Begin at the beginning, and resolve that you will traverse the goodly land from Dan to Beersheba. You will acquire a vast store of sermons if you read with your notebook close at hand; and as for thoughts, they will swarm around you like twittering swallows around an old gable towards the close of autumn.

(Source: https://www.preceptaustin.org/spurgeon-commenting-on-commentaries#:~:text=Every%20minister%20ought%20to%20read,land%20from%20Dan%20to%20Beersheba. accessed 2024 September)

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