Quotes from David Bohm

In the long run it is far more dangerous to adhere to illusion than to face what the actual fact is.

Clarity of perception and thought evidently requires that we be generally aware of how our experience is shaped by the insight (clear or confused) provided by the theories that are implicit or explicit in our general ways of thinking.

What prevents theoretical insights from going beyond existing limitations and changing to meet new facts is just the belief that theories give true knowledge of reality (which implies, of course, that they need never change).

In this flow, mind and matter are not separate substances. Rather, they are different aspects of one whole and unbroken movement.

If we supposed that theories gave true knowledge, corresponding to 'reality as it is', then we would have to conclude that Newtonian theory was true until around 1900, after which it suddenly became false, while relativity and quantum theory suddenly became the truth. Such an absurd conclusion does not arise, however, if we say that all theories are insights, which are neither true nor false but, rather, clear in certain domains, and unclear when extended beyond these domains.

we merely say that man is continually developing new forms of insight, which are clear up to a point and then tend to become unclear. In this activity, there is evidently no reason to suppose that there is or will be a final form of insight (corresponding to absolute truth)

The notion that the one who thinks (the Ego) is at least in principle completely separate from and independent of the reality that he thinks about is of course firmly embedded in our entire tradition.

The notion that all these fragments are separately existent is evidently an illusion, and this illusion cannot do other than lead to endless conflict and confusion.

culture – the collectively shared meaning

Then there is the further question of what is the relationship of thinking to reality. As careful attention shows, thought itself is in an actual process of movement.

Thought has been constantly evolving and we can't say when that system began.

To change your reality you have to change your inner thoughts.

Can we learn to become more learning-oriented individually and collectively, rather than 'I know' oriented?

In some sense man is a microcosm of the universe; therefore what man is, is a clue to the universe. We are enfolded in the universe.

Universe consists of frozen light.

From the outset, however, this whole controversy has been plagued by tacit assumptions, very often of a philosophical rather than a physical character.

But you don't decide what to do with the info. Thought runs you. Thought, however, gives false info that you are running it, that you are the one who controls thought. Whereas actually thought is the one which controls each one of us.

Individuality is only possible if it unfolds from wholeness.

One thus sees that a new kind of theory is needed which drops these basic commitments and at most recovers some essential features of the older theories as abstract forms derived from a deeper reality in which what prevails in unbroken wholeness.

But the way people commonly use the word nowadays it means something all of whose parts are mutually interdependent - not only for their mutual action, but for their meaning and for their existence.

This kind of overall way of thinking is not only a fertile source of new theoretical ideas: it is needed for the human mind to function in a generally harmonious way, which could in turn help to make possible an orderly and stable society.

The ability to perceive or think differently is more important than the knowledge gained.

We havent really paid much attention to thought as a process. we have engaged in thoughts, but we have only paid attention to the content, not to the process.

Anybody can use science and technology without fundamentally altering his own frame of mind which governs how they are used.