Quotes About Thought

Let me indicate a possible line of thought. It is, I admit, mere imagination; but how often is imagination the mother of truth?

Now, Jack, is there anything you would like? The youth pondered for a moment. I'd like a shillin', said he. Nothing you would like better? I'd like two shillin' better, the prodigy answered after some thought.

I think we'll shut that window again, if you don't mind. It is a singular thing, but I find that a concentrated atmosphere helps a concentration of thought.

he was, I knew perfectly well what it was over which he was brooding.

Sin la imaginación no existe el miedo.

Hay más en un cerebro que en su bolsillo»

There was a dense fog in my brain,impenetrable to any coherent thought,except the dull obsession of counting the minutes - an aching state of semi concsiousness and numb idiocy.

I have no illusions about the prospects of the theory I am proposing: it will suffer the inevitable fate of being proven wrong in many, or most, details, by new advances in psychology and neurology. What I am hoping for is that it will be found to contain a shadowy pattern of truth, and that it may stimulate those who search for unity in the diverse manifestations of human thought and emotion.

Philosophy is the gaseous state of thought, Science its liquid state, Religion its rigid state. In all three states doubts are expressed regarding the necessity, and even the possibility, of absolute death. We shall discuss this doubt only in its liquid state. . . .

The revolutions of thought which shape the basic outlook of an age are not disseminated through text-books - they spread like epidemics, through contamination by invisible agents and innocent germ carriers, by the most varied form of contact, or simply by breathing the common air.

The creative act of the humorist consisted in bringing about a momentary fusion between two habitually incompatible matrices. Scientific discovery, as we shall presently see, can be described in very similar terms-as the permanent fusion of matrices of thought previously believed to be incompatible.

The fact that his discoveries are found in it once more side by side with his fantasies, does not detract from its value. It is precisely this overlapping of two universe of thought, which gives the Epitome, as it does to the whole of Kepler's life and work, its unique value to the history of ideas.

The superimposition of two systems: thought and metre,' wrote Proust, 'is a primary element of ordered complexity, that is to say, of beauty.

The actual life of a thought lasts only until it reaches the point of speech...As soon as our thinking has found words it ceases to be sincere...When it begins to exist in others it ceases to live in us, just as the child severs itself from its mother when it enters into its own existence.

Hence, in all countries the chief occupation of society is card-playing, and it is the gauge of its value, and an outward sign that it is bankrupt in thought. Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another's money. Idiots!

Astrology provides a brilliant proof of the miserable subjectivity of human beings, as a result of which they relate everything to themselves and go from every thought in a straight line immediately back to themselves. It relates the course of the great celestial bodies to the pathetic I, as it also connects the comets in the sky with earthly quarrels and shabby tricks.

You can know only what you have thought about.

When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process.

Consideration of the kind, touched on above, might, indeed, lead us to embrace the belief that the greatest wisdom is to make the enjoyment of the present the supreme object of life; because that is the only reality, all else being merely the play of thought. On the other hand, such a course might just as well be called the greatest folly: for that which in the next moment exists no more, and vanishes utterly, like a dream, can never be worth a serious effort.

The cause of laughter in every case is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real objects which have been thought through it in some relation, and laughter itself is just the expression of this incongruity.... All laughter then is occasioned by a paradox.... This, briefly stated, is the true explanation of the ludicrous.

Assim, logo que nosso pensamento encontrou palavras, ele já deixa de ser algo íntimo, algo sério no nível mais profundo. Quando ele começa a existir para os outros, para de viver em nós, da mesma maneira que o filho se separa da mãe quando passa a ter sua existência própria.

Truth that has merely been learned is like an artificial limb, a false tooth, a waxen nose; it adheres to us only because it is put on. But truth acquired by thought of our own is like a natural limb; it alone really belongs to us.

Music is an unconscious exercise in metaphysics in which the mind does not know it is philosophizing.

To form a judgment intuitively is the privilege of few; authority and example lead the rest of the world. They see with the eyes of others, they hear with the ears of others. Therefore it is very easy to think as all the world now think; but to think as all the world will think thirty years hence is not in the power of every one.