Quotes About Thought

Daniel Kahneman's book Thinking, Fast and Slow,

My 'I', my conscious self, writing these words, does not feel like electrochemistry, but that is what it is.

Don't let despair mutate your flesh Look at my twisted stumps of thought See the fingers, listen to the voice I am slowly becoming the end of the line.

We think so because other people all think so; or because after all, we do think so; or because we were told so, and think we must think so; or because we once thought so, and think we still think so; or because, having thought so, we think we will think so.

whereas the philosopher seeks unity of principle, and consistency of method at the risk of paradox, the unphilosophic man is apt to hold different principles at once, and to apply different methods in more or less confused combination.

It is not the gift, but the thought that counts.

No amount of energy will take the place of thought. A strenuous life with its eyes shut is a kind of wild insanity.

Thought takes man out of servitude, into freedom.

Three silences there are: the first of speech,The second of desire, the third of thought.

I still seem to hear Sniatynski's words: "Do not philosophize her away, as you have philosophized away your abilities and your thirty-five years of life." I know it leads to nothing, I know it is wrong, but I do not know how not to think. 13

It seemed to him that there was nothing real in that religion, but that reality in presence of it was so paltry that it deserved not the time for thought.

This history of culture will explain to us the motives, the conditions of life, and the thought of the writer or reformer.

Life meanwhile, the actual life of men with their real interests of health and sickness, labour and rest, with their interests of thought, science, poetry, music, love, affection, hatred, passion, went its way, as always, independently, apart from the political amity or enmity of Napoleon Bonaparte, and apart from all possible reforms.

Y en lugar de una respuesta todo lo que se obtiene es la misma pregunta planteada de una forma mucho más compleja.

A thought can advance your life in the right direction only when it answers questions which were asked by your soul. A thought which was first borrowed from someone else and then accepted by your mind and memory does not really much influence your life, and sometimes leads you in the wrong direction. Read less, study less, but think more. Learn, both from your teachers and from the books which you read, only those things which you really need and which you really want to know.

Perhaps you think I'm losing the thread of my thought? Not a bit of it! I'm still telling you the story of how I murdered my wife, They asked me in court how I killed her, what I used to do it with. Imbeciles! They thought I killed her that day, the fifth of October, with a knife. It wasn't that day I killed her, it was much earlier. Exactly in the same way as they're killing their wives now, all of them...

Life meanwhile—real life, with its essential interests of health and sickness, toil and rest, and its intellectual interests in thought, science, poetry, music, love, friendship, hatred, and passions—went on as usual, independently of and apart from political friendship or enmity with Napoleon Bonaparte and from all the schemes of reconstruction.

Only when Prince Andrei was gone did Rostov think of what he ought to have said. And he was still more angry at having omitted to say it. He

Everything seemed so futile and insignificant in comparison with the stern and solemn train of thought that weakness from loss of blood, suffering, and the nearness of death aroused in him . Looking into Napoleon's eyes Prince Andrew thought of the insignificance of greatness, the unimportance of life which no one could understand, and the still greater unimportance of death, the meaning of which no one alive could understand or explain.

The view of life of these people, my comrades in authorship, consisted in this: that life in general goes on developing, and in this development we—men of thought—have the chief part; and among men of thought it is we—artists and poets—who have the greatest influence. Our vocation is to teach mankind.

assuming there are no sensations, it follows that there is no idea of existence.

You can pull a muscle thinking too much.

It was the wiser course, she thought, to deny the evidence of her senses, than her good sense.

To those who have substituted authoritarian science for authoritarian religion, individual thought is worthless unless it is the symbol for a reality which can be seen, tasted, felt, or thought about by everyone else. Such men adhere to a dogma as rigidly as men of fanatical religiosity. They reject the world of the personal, the happy world of open, playful, or aspiring thought.