Quotations – Page 3

Elspeth Kirkman

Pattern recognition is why our brains are amazing… Our brains look for patterns to simplify decision making. It can also mean we look for patterns when there may not be one for a particular issue. Alternatively, we may encounter a pattern and draw probable but incorrect conclusions. This explains why we buy into conspiracy theories or walk around our living room looking for our phone … [ Read more ]

Terry Tempest Williams

Denial stops us from listening… But denial lies. It protects us from the potency of a truth we cannot yet bear to accept. It takes our hands and leads us to places of comfort. Denial flourishes in the familiar. It seduces us with our own desires and cleverly constructs walls around us to keep us safe.

Leslie Lamport

Writing is nature’s way of telling us how lousy our thinking is.

Author: Leslie Lamport | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Reading | Writing, Thought | Inquiry

Jeff Blum

Assumptions can be malleable. Change the assumptions and the outcomes will change as well. Generally speaking, assumptions come into play when we are dealing with unknown or incomplete information situations, so it’s good to change the underlying assumptions and see how things would play out. Of course, if you are making assumptions, especially incorrect ones, in known situations, you need to correct that.

Maria Popova

We are touchingly prone to mistaking our models of reality for reality itself, mistaking the strength of our certainty for the strength of the evidence, thus moving through a dream of our own making that we call life.

Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Thought | Inquiry

Steven Levitt

A good rule of thumb in decision making is, whenever you cannot decide what you should do, choose the action that represents a change, rather than continuing the status quo.

Author: Steven Levitt | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Thought | Inquiry

David Foster Wallace

Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.

Author: David Foster Wallace | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Thought | Inquiry

Shane Parrish

One way to force yourself to think is to write. Good writing requires good thinking. Forcing yourself to make your thinking visible gives poor thinking nowhere to hide. You can’t simply take a few minutes here and there, get the gist of the problem, and expect to have clear writing. It doesn’t work that way.

Author: Shane Parrish | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Personal Improvement, Thought | Inquiry

Jane Ellen Harrison

The reasons by which people back up their prejudices are mostly negligible — not reason at all at bottom, but just instinctive self-justifications; but prejudice, rising as it does in emotion, has its roots in life and reality.

Author: Jane Ellen Harrison | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Thought | Inquiry

John Macmurray

Intellectual knowledge tells us about the world. it gives us knowledge about things, not knowledge of them. It does not reveal the world as it is. Only emotional knowledge can do that.

John Macmurray

The strength of our opposition to the development of reason is measured by the strength of our dislike of being disillusioned. We should all admit, if it were put to us directly, that it is good to get rid of illusions, but in practice the process of disillusionment is painful and disheartening. We all confess to the desire to get at the truth, but in … [ Read more ]

John Macmurray

The main difficulty that faces us in the development of a scientific knowledge of the world lies not in the outside world but in our own emotional life. It is the desire to retain beliefs to which we are emotionally attached for some reason or other. It is the tendency to make the wish father to the thought. .. If we are to be scientific … [ Read more ]

Maria Popova

We suffer primarily because we are so insentient to our own emotions, so illiterate in reading ourselves.

Bertrand Russell

If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do… The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there … [ Read more ]

Shane Parrish

Writing gives poor thinking nowhere to hide. When your invisible thoughts are made visible, you are forced to confront them as they are, not as you wish them to be. You can’t simply take a few minutes here and there, get the gist of the problem, and expect to have clear thinking and unique insights. Good thinking, like good writing, demands patience.

Author: Shane Parrish | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Reading | Writing, Thought | Inquiry

Andy Clark

Human minds are not elusive, ghostly inner things. They are seething, swirling oceans of prediction, continuously orchestrated by brain, body, and world. We should be careful what kinds of material, digital, and social worlds we build, because in building those worlds we are building our own minds too.

Author: Andy Clark | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Advice, Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Thought | Inquiry

Matthieu Ricard

I like the idea of Richard Davidson’s that happiness is a skill. It can be deeper, more present in your mental landscape. We deal with our mind from morning to evening, but we spend very little attention on improving the way we translate outer conditions, good or bad, into happiness or misery. And it’s crucial, because that’s what determines our day-to-day experience of the world! … [ Read more ]

Author: Matthieu Ricard | Source: The New York Times | Subjects: Advice, Education | Scholarship, Personal Improvement, Thought | Inquiry

Phillip Barlag

Reserving judgment and being open minded do not mean that we need to forgo our very natural tendency to form opinions. That said, I draw a distinction between opinion and judgment. Opinions are what we think based upon available information and experiences. They can be shifted over time based on new information and new experiences. I have changed my mind as I accumulated more knowledge … [ Read more ]

Author: Phillip Barlag | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Personal Improvement, Thought | Inquiry

Phillip Barlag

Americans have learned to shun the gray area. It is an uncomfortable place. Critical thought requires time, energy and accountability. In general, we want the answers provided to us in clean, digestible chunks.

Author: Phillip Barlag | Subjects: America, Education | Scholarship, International, Thought | Inquiry

Shane Parrish

Describing something with accuracy forces you to learn more about it. Accurate description requires the following:
Observation
Curiosity about what you are witnessing
Suspending assumptions about cause and effect
It can be difficult to stick with describing something completely and accurately. It’s hard to overcome the tendency to draw conclusions based on partial information or to leave assumptions unexplored.