| As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.
Henry David Thoreau The body which contains a diseased mind can never be anything but diseased. … In health, all the senses and the mind act in perfect coordination. Mahatma Gandhi The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking. True humility is intelligent self respect which keeps us from thinking too highly or too meanly of ourselves. It makes us modest by reminding us how far we have come short of what we can be. My definition of an intellectual is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger. The poor are prevented from thinking by the discipline of others, the rich by their own. Thinking no longer means anymore than checking at each moment whether one can indeed think. Let your performance do the thinking. Every night, I have to read a book, so that my mind will stop thinking about things that I stress about. Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest. It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations. Thinking is one thing no one has ever been able to tax. You can’t have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time. I don’t pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about. Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence. Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next. Hope lies in dreams, in imagination, and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality. I have had dreams and I have had nightmares, but I have conquered my nightmares because of my dreams. I pictured myself as a virus or a cancer cell and tried to sense what it would be like. It is always with excitement that I wake up in the morning wondering what my intuition will toss up to me, like gifts from the sea. I work with it and rely on it. It’s my partner. The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more. When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself. Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet. A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers. You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. Life must be lived as play. Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something. Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder. Courage is knowing what not to fear. For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories. Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge. Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence. If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals. Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil. No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern. I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning. Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous. The eyes of the soul of the multitudes are unable to endure the vision of the divine. Whenever I go on a ride, I’m always thinking of what’s wrong with the thing and how it can be improved. Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose. The most successful politician is he who says what the people are thinking most often in the loudest voice. If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking. Ambition never is in a greater hurry that I; it merely keeps pace with circumstances and with my general way of thinking. Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in. When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more. I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking. Thinking isn’t agreeing or disagreeing. That’s voting. I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day. Thinking will not overcome fear but action will. No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking. Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity. What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking. When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking. We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking. We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking. The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe. The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive. Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning. Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love. In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don’t try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present. When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness. I don’t think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking there’s some kind of change. A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right. When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon. There are two distinct classes of what are called thoughts: those that we produce in ourselves by reflection and the act of thinking and those that bolt into the mind of their own accord. Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it. I like thinking big. If you’re going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big. If I look confused it is because I am thinking. Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking. We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne. Liberal soccer moms are precisely as likely to receive anthrax in the mail as to develop a capacity for linear thinking. The only place where your dream becomes impossible is in your own thinking. If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done. Our thinking and our behaviour are always in anticipation of a response. It is therefore fear-based. There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking. The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil. We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death, the body maintains its irreparable lead. Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.
Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in. It is no good getting furious if you get stuck. What I do is keep thinking about the problem but work on something else. Sometimes it is years before I see the way forward. In the case of information loss and black holes, it was 29 years. All ideologies are idiotic, whether religious or political, for it is conceptual thinking, the conceptual word, which has so unfortunately divided man. A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him. But perhaps the rest of us could have separate classes in science appreciation, the wonder of science, scientific ways of thinking, and the history of scientific ideas, rather than laboratory experience. I succeeded by saying what everyone else is thinking. All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. I knew I was a winner back in the late sixties. I knew I was destined for great things. People will say that kind of thinking is totally immodest. I agree. Modesty is not a word that applies to me in any way – I hope it never will. To do anything truly worth doing, I must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in with gusto and scramble through as well as I can. Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week. If you’re going to be thinking, you may as well think big. Get into a line that you will find to be a deep personal interest, something you really enjoy spending twelve to fifteen hours a day working at, and the rest of the time thinking about. It is by not always thinking of yourself, if you can manage it, that you might somehow be happy. Until you make room in your life for someone as important to you as yourself, you will always be searching and lost. But I was thinking of a way To multiply by ten, And always, in the answer, get The question back again. Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking. Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world. The only thing I do is just pray for inspiration, for a way of thinking, because I don’t have any particular goal in sight. I cannot help thinking that the menace of Hell makes as many devils as the severe penal codes of inhuman humanity make villains.
The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible. Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed. I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again – as I always am when I write. Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice. Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth. When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn’t a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking. Most of one’s life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking. We teach people that they upset themselves. We can’t change the past, so we change how people are thinking, feeling and behaving today. Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else. The money can be a hindrance to someone like me because the danger is that you start thinking, ‘Is that a $20 million take?’ That kind of thing, and being self-critical. My thought is me: that is why I cannot stop thinking. I exist because I think I cannot keep from thinking. Thinking good thoughts is not enough, doing good deeds is not enough, seeing others follow your good examples is enough. A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings. Man can alter his life by altering his thinking. To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else’s type of thinking. The secret of living a life of excellence is merely a matter of thinking thoughts of excellence. Really, it’s a matter of programming our minds with the kind of information that will set us free. Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own. Guys are simple… women are not simple and they always assume that men must be just as complicated as they are, only way more mysterious. The whole point is guys are not thinking much. They are just what they appear to be. Tragically. The songs are about things that we were thinking and we wrote ‘em down, and when you listen to ‘em, whatever you think it’s about… THAT’S what it’s about! If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking. Faith is much better than belief. Belief is when someone else does the thinking. I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me – shapes and ideas so near to me – so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn’t occurred to me to put them down. Talk to people in their own language. If you do it well, they’ll say, ‘God, he said exactly what I was thinking.’ And when they begin to respect you, they’ll follow you to the death. Rapine, avarice, expense, This is idolatry; and these we adore; Plain living and high thinking are no more. I asked a ref if he could give me a technical foul for thinking bad things about him. He said, of course not. I said, well, I think you stink. And he gave me a technical. You can’t trust em. I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in the subway, where you can’t do anything anyway. Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine By which alone the mortal heart is led Unto the thinking of the thought divine. I feel I have a lot to learn from English football and I am completely open to good influences in my way of thinking football. But I also have things to give them. A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking. Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted. The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. |