#though

To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive. ↗

— Robert Louis Stevenson

#individualism #preference #independence

In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought. ↗

— Michael Crichton

#thoughtlessness #information

An educated man is not, necessarily, one who has an abundance of general or specialized knowledge. An educated man is one who has so developed the faculties of his mind that he may acquire anything he wants, or its equivalent, without violating the rights of others. – ↗

— Napoleon Hill

#new-thought #science-of-mind #education

I thought, possibly, that what I really needed was to go where nobody knew me and start over again, with none of my previous decisions, conversations, or expectations coming with me. ↗

— Maggie Stiefvater

#start-over-again #thought #conversation

But far more numerous was the herd of such, Who think too little and who talk too much. ↗

— John Dryden

#loquacity #thoughtlessness #contemporary

Sometimes we have thoughts that even we don’t understand. Thoughts that aren’t even true—that aren’t really how we feel—but they’re running through our heads anyway because they’re interesting to think about. If you could hear other people’s thoughts, you’d overhear things that are true as well as things that are completely random. And you wouldn’t know one from the other. It’d drive you insane. What’s true? What’s not? A million ideas, but what do they mean? ↗

— Jay Asher

#thinking #thoughts #random

Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction from all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives by means of volitional choice. He has no automatic knowledge of what is good for him or evil, what values his life depends on, what course of action it requires. Are you prattling about an instinct of self-preservation? An instinct of self-preservation is precisely what man does not possess. An 'instinct' in as unerring and automatic form of knowledge. A desire is not an instinct. A desire to live does not give you the knowledge required for living. And even man's desire to live is not automatic: your secret evil today is that that is the desire you do not hold. Your fear of death is not a love of life and will not give you the knowledge needed to keep it. Man must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process of thinking, which nature will not force him to perform. Man has the power to act as his own destroyer--and that is the way he has acted through most of history. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#human-nature #instincts #life #man #thought

But I've strayed so far from normal now, I'll never find my way back. And the truth is, I no longer want to. ↗

— Alyson Noel

#thought-provoking

It's just like John Mayer says in "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room". When it's this bad, you have to get out or you'll get burned. ↗

— Susane Colasanti

#thought-provoking

Words are like people, I think. Put too many of them too close together and they cause trouble. ↗

— Carolee Dean

#people #thought-provoking #words #thought-provoking