Quotes on Thinking

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The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognise that we ought to control our thoughts.
 
Thought forms in the soul in the same way clouds form in the air.
 
There is a kink in my damned brain that prevents me from thinking as other people think.
 
The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think.
 
What luck for rulers, that men do not think.
 
The final upshot of thinking is the exercise of volition, and of this thought no longer forms a part; but belief is only a stadium of mental action, an effect upon our nature due to thought, which will influence future thinking.
 
The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.
 
Life is a movement, a constant movement in relationship; and thought, trying to capture that movement in terms of the past, as memory, is afraid of life.
 
It is difficult to describe paths of thought where there are already many paths laid down, and not fall into one of the grooves.
 
[Philosophy] must set limits to what can be thought; and, in doing so, to what cannot be thought. It must set limits to what cannot be thought by working outwards through what can be thought.
 
No one can think a thought for me in the way that no one can don my hat for me.
 
Thought is so cunning, so clever, that it distorts everything for its own convenience.
 
I give no sources, because it is indifferent to me whether what I have thought has already been thought before me by another.
 
We are all prisoners of our thoughts.
 
Thinking is difficult, so most of us judge.
 
I do not think thoughts, thoughts think me,
 
You could attach prices to thoughts. Some cost a lot, some a little. And how does one pay for thoughts? The answer, I think, is: with courage.
 
No, no, you're not thinking, you're just being logical. 
 
The woof and warp of all thought and all research is symbols, and the life of thought and science is the life inherent in symbols; so that it is wrong to say that a good language is important to good thought, merely; for it is the essence of it.
 
Consciousness is the one thing in this universe that cannot be an illusion.
 
When we think of coconuts or pigs, there are no coconuts or pigs in the brain.
 
A logical picture of facts is a thought.
 
Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.
 
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
 
Think like a man of action. Act like a man of thought.
 
Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do.
 
We have been trained to think of patterns, with the exception of those of music, as fixed affairs. It is easier and lazier that way but, of course, all nonsense. In truth, the right way to begin to think about the pattern which connects is to think of it as primarily (whatever that means) a dance of interacting parts and only secondarily pegged down by various sorts of physical limits and by those limits which organisms characteristically impose.
 
Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it.
 
A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
 
We do not really think, we are barely conscious, until something goes wrong.
 
You can't think decently if you're not willing to hurt yourself.
 
My thought is me: that is why I cannot stop thinking. I exist because I think I cannot keep from thinking.
 
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin -- more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.
 
HORSE SENSE: Stable thinking
 
This book will perhaps only be understood by those who have themselves already thought the thoughts which are expressed in it-or similar thoughts. It is therefore not a text-book. Its object would be attained if it afforded pleasure to one who read it with understanding.
 
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