Quotes
Quotes about Thought
Thought control, like birth control, is best undertaken as long as possible before the fact. Many grown-ups will obstinately persist, if only now and then, in composing small strings of sentences in their heads and achieving at least momentary logic. This probably cannot be prevented, but we have learned how to minimize the consequences by arranging that such grown-ups will be unable to pursue that logic very far. If they were at home in the technology of writing, there's no telling how much social disorder they would cause by thinking things out at length.Our schools have chosen to cut this danger off as close to the root as possible, thus taking measures to preclude not only the birth of thought but its conception. They give the pill to even the youngest children, but just to be on the safe side, they give it to everybody else, too, especially all would-be schoolteachers.
Because we do not understand the brain very well we are constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it. In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard. ('What else could it be?') I was amused to see that Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought that the brain worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electro-magnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill, and I am told some of the ancient Greeks thought the brain functions like a catapult. At present, obviously, the metaphor is the digital computer.
Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought.
Simplicity is the outward sign and symbol of depth of thought.
When we find a thinker reflecting or echoing an apparently erroneous, narrow, or even illogical thought that was popular or authoritative in his time, we must never rule out the possibility that what we have discovered is not the limit of his vision but only an example of his deliberate rhetorical accommodation to reigning prejudice which he does not share but thinks it best not to expose.
It is a juvenile notion that a society needs a lofty purpose and a shining vision to achieve much. Both in the marketplace and on the battlefield men who set their hearts on toys have often displayed unequal initiative and drive. And one must be ignorant of the creative process to look for a close correspondence between motive and achievement in the world of thought and imagination.
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
Knowing as "the man in the street" (as we call him as Newmarket) always does, the greatest secrets of kings, and being the confidant of their most hidden thoughts.
He presents me with what is always an acceptable gift who brings me news of a great thought before unknown. He enriches me without impoverishing himself.
The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.
Apothegms to thinking minds are the seeds from which spring vast fields of new thought, that may be further cultivated, beautified, and enlarged.
A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation. â¢George Bernard Shaw It is better to be quotable than to be honest. â¢Tom Stoppard Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations. â¢Orson Welles Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
There are intangible realities which float near us, formless and without words; realities which no one has thought out, and which are excluded for lack of interpreters.
One might speak to great length of the three corners of realitywhat was seen, what was thought to be seen, and what was thought ought to be seen.
For take thy ballaunce if thou be so wise, And weigh the winds that under heaven doth blow; Or weigh the light that in the east doth rise; Or weigh the thought that from man's mind doth flow.
Must be out-of-doors enough to get experience of wholesome reality, as a ballast to thought and sentiment. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life.
The discussions of every age are filled with the issues on which its leading schools of thought differ. But the general intellectual atmosphere of the time is always determined by the views on which the opposing schools agree. They become the unspoken presuppositions of all thought, and common and unquestioningly accepted foundations on which all discussion proceeds.
Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.
A man met a lad weeping. "What do you weep for?" he asked. "I am weeping for my sins," said the lad. "You must have little to do," said the man. The next day, they met again. Once more the lad was weeping. "Why do you weep now?" asked the man. "I am weeping because I have nothing to eat," said the lad. "I thought it would come to that," said the man.
Idolatry is in a man's own thought, not in the opinion of another.
It was a hug that said you're not alone. It was a hug that, just when I thought all my strength was used up, and I couldn't go on, renewed me.
Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings - always darker, emptier and simpler.
Cruel Remorse! where Youth and Pleasure sport, And thoughtless Folly keeps her court,-- Crouching 'midst rosy bowers thou lurk'st unseen Slumbering the festal hours away, While Youth disports in that enchanting scene; Till on some fated day Thou with a tiger-spring dost leap upon thy prey, And tear his helpless breast, o'erwhelmed with wild dismay.
