Our thoughts help us reason and problem-solve. Conscious thought and reflection help us understand better. Thoughts may lead us to action. What we think, then, is an important component of who we are and how we will live our lives. Our thoughts help us or hurt us, contribute to failure or success. Thoughts can become worry or anxiety, and thoughts don’t necessarily reflect reality. Here are some thoughts about thoughts and thinking.
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.
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.
[I]n such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.
We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.
When I examined myself and my methods of thought, I came to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
Everything has changed, except our way of thinking.
The significant problems of our time cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.
Space and time are not conditions in which we live, they are modes in which we think.
Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought.
Almost all of us long for peace and freedom; but very few of us have much enthusiasm for the thoughts, feelings, and actions that make for peace and freedom.
Amusement is the happiness of those who cannot think.
There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.
Poets and heroes are of the same race, the latter do what the former conceive.
Not out of right practice comes right thinking, but out of right thinking comes right practice. It matters enormously what you think. If you think falsely, you will act mistakenly; if you think basely, your conduct will suit your thinking.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.
But I try not to think with my gut. If I’m serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble.
But in introducing me simultaneously to skepticism and to wonder, they taught me the two uneasily cohabiting modes of thought that are central to the scientific method.
The way we think of and perceive the world is mistaken. Our consciousness is structured such that no matter how carefully we may think, no matter how hard we may try to grasp the world around us, the conclusion we arrive at is always different from what things are actually like, and it is our acting upon this mistaken perception that leads to suffering.
We live in deeds, not years: In thoughts not breaths; In feelings, not in figures on a dial. We should count time by heart throbs. He most lives who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.
If you make people think they are thinking, they will love you. If you really make them think, they’ll hate you.
If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you; but if you really make them think they’ll hate you.
With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.
We are disturbed not by events, but by the views which we take of them.
I may not be able to say all I think, but I am not going to say anything I do not think.
[T]he test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the “impossible” come true.
The contemplation of things as they are, without substitution or imposture, without error or confusion, is in itself a nobler thing than a whole harvest of invention.
The fountain of beauty is the heart and every generous thought illustrates the walls of your chamber.
All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.
