Quotes about thinking

I strongly reject any conceptual scheme that places our options on a line, and holds that the only alternative to a pair of extreme positions lies somewhere between them. More fruitful perspectives often require that we step off the line to a site outside the dichotomy.

Great theories are expansive; failures mire us in dogmatism and tunnel vision.

Too much cleanliness is an enemy to creation, to speculative thought.

The inert mind is a greater danger than the inert body, for it overlays and stifles the desire to live.

They did ask, sometimes, and accepted my decision without argument. But I could see that they did not always believe me. That pleased me; they were starting to think for themselves — didn’t matter if they were wrong.

When you come right to it, it is easier to die than it is to use your head.

Ideas are inherently conservative. They yield not to the attack of other ideas but to the massive onslaught of circumstance with which they cannot contend.

The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.

Ideas do not respect national frontiers, and this is especially so where language and other traditions are in common.

Only the ideas that we actually live are of any value. You knew all along that your sanctioned world was only half the world and you tried to suppress the second half the same way the priests and teachers do. You won't succeed. No one succeeds in this once he has begun to think.

Truly, thoughts are things, and their scope of operation is the world, itself. p. 87

Any idea, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought. p. 54