All Quotes By Tag: Thinking

“Henry, there’s something I would like to tell you, for what it’s worth, something I wish I had been told years ago. You’ve been a consultant for a long time, and you’ve dealt a great deal with top secret information. But you’re about to receive a whole slew of special clearances, maybe fifteen or twenty of them, that are higher than top secret.I’ve had a number of these myself, and I’ve known other people who have just acquired them, and I have a pretty good sense of what the effects of receiving these clearances are on a person who didn’t previously know they even existed. And the effects of reading the information that they will make available to you.First, you’ll be exhilarated by some of this new information, and by having it all—so much! incredible!—suddenly available to you. But second, almost as fast, you will feel like a fool for having studied, written, talked about these subjects, criticized and analyzed decisions made by presidents for years without having known of the existence of all this information, which presidents and others had and you didn’t, and which must have influenced their decisions in ways you couldn’t even guess. In particular, you’ll feel foolish for having literally rubbed shoulders for over a decade with some officials and consultants who did have access to all this information you didn’t know about and didn’t know they had, and you’ll be stunned that they kept that secret from you so well.You will feel like a fool, and that will last for about two weeks. Then, after you’ve started reading all this daily intelligence input and become used to using what amounts to whole libraries of hidden information, which is much more closely held than mere top secret data, you will forget there ever was a time when you didn’t have it, and you’ll be aware only of the fact that you have it now and most others don’t … and that all those other people are fools.Over a longer period of time—not too long, but a matter of two or three years—you’ll eventually become aware of the limitations of this information. There is a great deal that it doesn’t tell you, it’s often inaccurate, and it can lead you astray just as much as the New York Times can. But that takes a while to learn.In the meantime it will have become very hard for you to learn from anybody who doesn’t have these clearances. Because you’ll be thinking as you listen to them: “What would this man be telling me if he knew what I know? Would he be giving me the same advice, or would it totally change his predictions and recommendations?” And that mental exercise is so torturous that after a while you give it up and just stop listening. I’ve seen this with my superiors, my colleagues … and with myself.You will deal with a person who doesn’t have those clearances only from the point of view of what you want him to believe and what impression you want him to go away with, since you’ll have to lie carefully to him about what you know. In effect, you will have to manipulate him. You’ll give up trying to assess what he has to say. The danger is, you’ll become something like a moron. You’ll become incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they may have in their particular areas that may be much greater than yours.”

“They had never previously been obliged to engage in such mental effort, and it gave them headaches. However, although the aim of their quest forever eluded them, they ended up finding its outline. If not the thing itself, then at least its shadow.They debated at length on all that referred to it and, to their great surprise, realised that they were already perfectly aware of what they had been looking for. They had always been privy to the main point, the first principle, of the pyramid’s raison-d’être, except that it had lain in their minds in a pre-verbal, indeed in an unthinking state. The papyri of the archives had only draped it in words and in meaning. Insofar as a shadow can be draped.”

“Perspective is what all matters for a path you look at!!”

“Three PeopleOne cause the misunderstandingThe other misunderstoodAnd another did not wish to explainThat night, all three of them walked in the rain”

“Knowing without loving is frankly dangerous for the soul and for society. You’ll critique most everything you encounter and even have the hubris to call this mode of reflexive cynicism “thinking” (whereas it’s really your ego’s narcissistic reaction to the moment). You’ll position things to quickly as inferior or superior, “with me” or “against me,” and most of the time you’ll be wrong.”

“Una sociedad se hace grande cuando los hombres viejos plantan árboles cuya sombra nunca verán”

“Small thinking keeps small businesses small”

“Las personas con un alto nivel de tolerancia al aburrimiento tienen tiempo de sobra para pensar.”

“A warrior of the Light is never in a hurry.Time works in his favor; he learns to master his impatience and avoids acting without thinking.”

“The greatest mistake we make is teaching our children to memorize things without even understanding, Instead of teaching them problem solving and critical thinking.”

“when we look up, it widens our horizons. we see what a little speck we are in the universe, so insignificant, and we all take ourselves so seriously, but in the sky, there are no boundaries. No differences of caste or religion or race.”

“I would walk along the quais when I had finished work or when I was trying to think something out. It was easier to think if I was walking and doing something or seeing people doing something that they understood.”

“If you can’t write clearly, you probably don’t think nearly as well as you think you do.”

“Mediocrity is not in the means but keeping a profile that negates healthy thinking.”

“There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing.”