All Quotes By Tag: Thinking

“If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change.”

“Doubt as sin. — Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature — is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned.”

“We are addicted to our thoughts. We cannot change anything if we cannot change our thinking.”

“No brain at all, some of them [people], only grey fluff that’s blown into their heads by mistake, and they don’t Think.”

“Sometimes I think it is a great mistake to have matter that can think and feel. It complains so. By the same token, though, I suppose that boulders and mountains and moons could be accused of being a little too phlegmatic.”

“I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.”

“Poirot,” I said. “I have been thinking.””An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it.”

“The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.”

“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.”

“…and you drink a little too much and try a little too hard. And you go home to a cold bed and think, ‘That was fine’. And your life is a long line of fine.”

“People don’t like to think, if one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.”

“Life is an experimental journey undertaken involuntarily. It is a journey of the spirit through the material world and, since it is the spirit that travels, it is the spirit that is experienced. That is why there exist contemplative souls who have lived more intensely, more widely, more tumultuously than others who have lived their lives purely externally.”

“The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live –moreover, the only one.”

“Closed in a room, my imagination becomes the universe, and the rest of the world is missing out.”

“Don’t JustDon’t just learn, experience.Don’t just read, absorb.Don’t just change, transform.Don’t just relate, advocate.Don’t just promise, prove.Don’t just criticize, encourage.Don’t just think, ponder.Don’t just take, give.Don’t just see, feel.Don’t just dream, do. Don’t just hear, listen.Don’t just talk, act.Don’t just tell, show.Don’t just exist, live.”