Quotes About Thought

Choosing beliefs freely is not what rational minds do.

Knowing what a person believes on a certain subject is not identical to knowing how that person thinks.

The intention to do one thing and not another does not originate in consciousness -- rather, it appears in consciousness, as does any thought or impulse that might oppose it.

However, to say that I could have done otherwise is merely to think the thought "I could have done otherwise" after doing whatever I in fact did. This is an empty affirmation.

I cannot decide what I will next think or intend until a thought or intention arises. What will my next mental state be? I do not know—it just happens. Where is the freedom in that?

Our habitual failure to recognise thought as thought, our habitual identification with discursive thought, is the primary source of human suffering.

Self-control is strength. Right thought is mastery. Calmness is power.

Meditation is sticking to one thought. That single thought keeps away other thoughts; distraction of mind is a sign of its weakness; by constant meditation it gains strength.

Recover the source of all strength in yourself, and all else will be added to you ... political freedom, the mastery of human thought, the hegemony of the world.

Vision is perhaps our greatest strength.. it has kept us alive to the power and continuity of thought through the centuries, it makes us peer into the future and lends shape to the unknown.

The survival of American democracy depends less on the size of its armies than on the capacity of its individual citizens to rely... on the strength of their own thought.

Right motives give pinions to thought, and strength and freedom to speech and action.

The child is a realist in every domain of thought, and it is therefore natural that in the moral sphere he should lay more stress on the external, tangible element than on the hidden motive.

The reason humans experience so much more stress than other species isn't just because we think more, but also because we think differently.

Stress is a thought, a perception of fear, it will melt away if welet our thoughts change with courage.

No amount of reading or memorizing will make you successful in life. It is the understanding and application of wise thought which counts.

Everything begins as an internal reality and then is externalized through perception.

The man who has the largest capacity for work and thought is the man who is bound to succeed.

Any idea that is held in the mind, that is emphasized, that is either feared or revered, will begin at once to cloth itself in the most convenient and appropriate form available.

We do not live to think, but, on the contrary, we think in order that we may succeed in surviving.

When a thought is too weak to be expressed simply, it should be rejected.

My goal in life is to make people think. If I do that, I've been a success.

Yes; your house is dull enough to drive people to think.

Nothing passes the time, or shortens the path, like a thought which engrosses all the faculties of an individual's organization. Our external existence is a sleep, of which this thought is the dream; and while we are subjected to its influence, time has no longer any measure, nor is there any distance in space. We leave one place and arrive at another, and are conscious of nothing between.