Quotes About Thinking

Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion, in the long run these are the only people who count.

If God meant for people to fly, He would have given them brains.

Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well.

I laugh because I dare not cry. This is a crazy world and the only way to enjoy it is to treat it as a joke. That doesn't mean I don't read and can't think. I read everything from Giblett to Hoyle, from Sartre to Pauling. I read in the tub, I read on the john, I read in bed, I read when I eat alone, and I would read in my sleep if I could keep my eyes open.

poetry is a special way of imagining the world or, to put this in more cognitive terms, a special mode of thinking with its own momentum and its own peculiar advantages.

Whenever people are certain they understand our peculiar situation here on this planet, it is because they have accepted a religious Faith or a secular Ideology (Ideologies are the modern form of Faiths) and just stopped thinking.

the distinction between magick and communication exits only in our traditional ways of thinking. The uncanny Egyptians attributed both inventions to a single deity, Thoth, god of speech and other illusions.

You asked me what linguistics I find most pernicious. I started with is. The either/or habit is very pernicious. It seems very pernicious to me, I mean. Two-valued situations are relatively rare, actually.

As Dr. Leonard Orr has noted, the human mind behaves as if it were divided into two parts, the Thinker and the Prover.

Krishnamurti distinguishes between thinking, an active process, and thought, the result of past thinking filed away in the memory of the brain, or in a library or computer, etc. Thought contains all the wisdom, and much of the folly, of the past; it's a great labor-saving device. Why does Krishnamurti regard thought as profoundly dangerous and the enemy of thinking?

To the extent that we remain conscious of this process of superimposing structure (programming our emic reality) we will behave liberally and will continue learning throughout life. To the extent that we become unconscious of this process, we will behave Fundamentalistically or Idolatrously and will never again learn anything after the hour at which we (usually unconsciously) elevate a generalization into a dogma and stop thinking.

Maybe — just maybe — the taboo breached by Velikovsky is this: We are not supposed to think about Planetary Catastrophes.

Consider the child's riddle, Where does your fist go when you open your hand? This can be answered by thinking like Einstein, although on a less cosmic scale. That is, the child must first realize that the fist is not a thing but a relationship (a coherent synergy Bucky Fuller would say). It is not a mere etymological felicity to say that thinking of relations is the first step to thinking Relativistically.

I also employ the scatter technique of Sufi writers. Topics do not always appear in linear, logical order, but in a non-linear psycho-logical order calculated to produce new ways of thinking and perceiving. This technique also intends to assist the process of internalization.

Are you objectifying that young woman?" I said. "Absolutely not," Hawk said. "I thinking about her with her clothes off.

Carly said, "What are you doing?" "Thinking. Impressive, isn't it?" "Is this what detective work looks like?" "Only when I'm showing off." "You're funny." "A national treasure.

The beer came and I said, "Joe, I'm thinking that there is something larger here than an attorney's zealous defense of his client." The master of understatement.

Ghazi al-Diri's life ended with the Korean's call. He was in the commissary when his phone buzzed, letting his coffee steep in a French press he brought from Saõ Paulo. Now, he slipped the phone into his pocket, and poured the coffee. Several of his men were near, eating burritos of eggs and beans they had made for themselves. Ghazi moved away from them to think. He was angry, but might yet survive if he remained calm. Maysan

In the interest of thinking tragically in order to avoid tragedy, policy makers need to worry about how not to provoke more anarchy than the world has already seen.

Thinking is not to agree or disagree. That's voting.

Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, grace metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, Why don't you say what you mean? We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections — whether from diffidence or some other instinct.

But improvisation will only bring you as far as the next crisis, and is never a substitute for thinking several steps ahead and planning to the end.

Most people believe that they are in fact aware of the future, that they are planning and thinking ahead. They are usually deluded: What they are really doing is succumbing to their desires, to what they want the future to be. Their plans are vague, based on their imaginations rather than their reality. They may believe they are thinking all the way to the end, but they are really only focusing on the happy ending, and deluding themselves by the strength of their desire.

Toad," she said presently, "just listen, please. I have an aunt who is a washerwoman." "There, there," said Toad, graciously and affably, "never mind; think no more about it. I have several aunts who ought to be washerwomen." "Do be quiet a minute, Toad," said the girl. "You talk too much, that's your chief fault, and I'm trying to think, and you hurt my head