Quotes about Thinking

Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

If human emotions largely result from thinking, then one may appreciably control one's feelings by controlling one's thoughts - or by changing the internalized sentences, or self-talk, with which one largely created the feeling in the first place.

What with making their way and enjoying what they have won, heroes have no time to think. But the sons of heroes - ah, they have all the necessary leisure.

Learn to think continentally.

Rapine, avarice, expense, This is idolatry; and these we adore; Plain living and high thinking are no more.

King-ian nonviolence is a way of thinking and living and is not confined to the work of social and systemic change.

We do not think ourselves into a new way of living. We live ourselves into new ways of thinking.

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

We are all spiritually powerless, however, and not just those physically addicted to a substance, which is why I address this book to everyone. Alcoholics just have their powerlessness visible for all to see. The rest of us disguise it in different ways, and overcompensate for our more hidden and subtle addictions and attachments, especially our addiction to our way of thinking.

Stinking thinking" is the universal addiction. Substance addictions like alcohol and drugs are merely the most visible form of addiction, but actually we are all addicted to our own habitual way of doing anything, our own defenses, and most especially, our patterned way of thinking, or how we process our reality.

Let me sum it up this way: We do not think ourselves into a new way of living. We live ourselves into new ways of thinking. Without action and lifestyle decisions, without concrete practices, words are dangerous and largely illusory.

I personally describe contemplation as "non-dual consciousness" and find that it is necessary to overcome the "stinking thinking" of most addicts, which tends to be "all-or-nothing thinking."3 We could say that authentic spirituality is invariably a matter of emptying the mind and filling the heart at the same time.