Quotes About Thought

Universal literacy was supposed to educate the common man to control his environment. Once he could read and write he would have a mind fit to rule. So ran the democratic doctrine. But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given him rubber stamps, rubber stamps inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of the tabloids and the platitudes of history, but quite innocent of original thought.

The average citizen is the world's most efficient censor. His own mind is the greatest barrier between him and the facts. His own "logic-proof compartments," his own absolutism are the obstacles which prevent him from seeing in terms of experience and thought rather than in terms of group reaction.

Most adults with ADD are struggling to express a part of themselves that often seems unraveled as they strive to join the thought behind unto the thought before.

When social critics deplore the materialism of our time and its preoccupation with money, fame, and superficial values, they overlook that the driving force behind the changes we have seen -- one of the greatest periods of change in history -- has been thought. It wasn't big bucks or social status that drove this change. It was, and is, the force of the play of the mind. As materialistic as we may be, playful thinking got us here.

The only man who can change his mind is a man that's got one.

But history shows that logic launched from introspection alone lacks thrust, can travel only so far, and usually heads in the wrong direction.

Thinking about thinking is the core process of the creative arts, but it tells us very little about how we think the way we do, and nothing of why the creative arts originated in the first place.

The best of science doesn't consist of mathematical models and experiments, as textbooks make it seem. Those come later. It springs fresh from a more primitive mode of thought, wherein the hunter's mind weaves ideas from old facts and fresh metaphors and the scrambled crazy images of things recently seen. To move forward is to concoct new patterns of thought, which in turn dictate the design of the models and experiments. Easy to say, difficult to achieve.

Language and our thought-grooves are inextricably interwoven, are, in a sense, one and the same.

How could he think his way out of the problem when the problem was the way he thought...

Science attempts to find logic and simplicity in nature. Mathematics attempts to establish order and simplicity in human thought.

Yet I think he was not wholly the loser by being unable to think. The eye untroubled by thought sees things like a mirror newly burnished; at night, for example, the musing can see nothing before him but a mist, but if he stops thinking quickly the roads, the walls, the trees become visible. (pp217)

But if an Original, by being as excellent, as new, adds admiration to surprize, then we are at the writer's mercy; on the strong wing of his imagination, we are snatched from Britain to Italy, from climate to climate, from pleasure to pleasure; we have no home, no thought, of our own; till the magician drops his pen: And then falling down into ourselves, we awake to flat realities, lamenting the change, like the beggar who dreamt himself a prince.

Men without an organized system of thought will always be at the mercy of men who have one.

An epigram often flashes light into regions where reason shines but dimly.

A thought has no specific language; however, it can fly and land, upon whichever mind and language.

Abuse is the filth of thought, not of the tongue since the tongue is just a means of expression; it depends on you; how you express, in a pleasant way or unpleasant.

Adopt and spread a visionary thought, executes the best process; however, steal and claim that as its thinker, exhibits an utterly hideous practice.

Even though various definitions of perception, it also defines precisely such a thought that comes and stays in mind; however, it appears not as a physical appearance. Conversely, the tendency exists practically and works to prove its context.

God and Devil exist or not exist; however, the idea of God is a positive feeling, and Devil a negative thought. It is God and Devil, and both subsist.

God only inspires the feeling and thought, not language, and grammar.

Historical radicalism and today's radicalism gained and achieved only the outward glamour of style and system, not the inward changing of thought, conduct, and distinction. As a fact, the conception, whether colonialism, imperialism, and such isms still exist; however, in a new packing of radicalism; otherwise, one can realize, and easily define as that: Fool the public; rule the republic.

Love with the mind collapses without notice.

None of the writings, one can exclude from the grammatical errors and mistakes; it means not a verdict, for disqualification since thought and vision of every writing subject prevail, not the grammar.