Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes

Life in the true sense is perceiving or thinking.

To live is to think.

The actuality of thought is life.

Thought is the measure of life.

To think and to be fully alive are the same.

I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.

Sometimes I think, sometimes I am .

How alive is thought, invisible, yet without thought there is no sight.

I'm not sure if I could tell the difference—between just staring into space and thinking. We're usually thinking all the time, aren't we? Not that we live in order to think, but the opposite isn't true either—that we think in order to live. I believe, contrary to Descartes, that we sometimes think in order not to be. Staring into space might unintentionally have the opposite effect.

I desire therefore I exist.

A long time ago, Descartes sad, “I think, therefore I am.” But if you are not thinking, what?

All thought of something is at the same time self-consciousness [...] At the root of all our experiences and all our reflections, we find [...] a being which immediately recognises itself, [...] and which knows its own existence, not by observation and as a given fact, nor by inference from any idea of itself, but through direct contact with that existence. Self-consciousness is the very being of mind in action.

I am thing that thinks: that is, a things that doubts,affirms, denies, understands a few things, is ignorant of many things, is willing, is unwilling, and also which imagines and has sensory perceptions.

Consciousness is the foundation of all thinking; and thinking is the foundation of all consciousness.

The mind, whatever else it is, is a constant of everyone's experience, and, in more ways than we know, the creator of the reality that we live within... Nothing is more essential to us.

The great mystery of our consciousness is beyond our grasp.

At times I think and at times I am.

Our nature is the mind. And the mind is our nature.

I think, therefore I am.

I am, therefore I'll think.

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

What's more valuable - intelligence or consciousness?

Vivere est cogitare. (To think is to live)

In all the universe there is nothing more precious than mind.

I can readily conceive of a man without hands or feet; and I could conceive of him without a head, if experience had not taught me that by this he thinks, Thought then, is the essence of man, and without this we cannot conceive of him.