Maya Lin Quotes

Give them your brains, girl, never your guts.

There comes a point where emotions must give way to objective facts.

I want it so that every minister will be not a parrot, not an owl sitting upon a dead limb of the tree of knowledge and hooting the hoots that have been hooted for eighteen hundred years. But I want it so that each one can be an investigator, a thinker; and I want to make his congregation grand enough so that they will not only allow him to think, but will demand that he shall think, and give to them the honest truth of his thought.

Take advice, but not orders. Only give yourself orders.

What's the point in having a mind if you don't use it to make judgements?

I expect people to at least use some thought.

There are no evil thoughts except one; the refusal to think.

I looked at enough of American Idol in the first weeks, and they're all about humiliation. I listen to Rush Limbaugh because I find it so repulsive. There are people with a little less sophistication who watch a lot of it, because we allow things to appeal to our baser instincts. But at the same moment, give me a little choice, and I'll make a better decision, because I have that ability too. And so does everybody else.

Arnold Schwarzenegger said it best: "Your son is sick. Ninety-eight doctors give you one diagnosis, two doctors give you another. Who are you going to go with?" Well, why would it be the conservative position to go with the two? That's not conservative, that's crazy.

You shouldn’t blindly accept a leader’s advice. You’ve got to question leaders on occasion.

In doubt a man of worth will trust to his own wisdom.

It was one thing to use computers as a tool, quite another to let them do your thinking for you.

You've got to give people a fair chance of saying what they believe, and then you've got to decide, "Do you believe 'em?"

Wisdom and knowledge can best be understood together. Knowledge is learning, the power of the mind to understand and describe the universe. Wisdom is knowing how to apply knowledge and how not to apply it. Knowledge is knowing what to say; wisdom is knowing whether or not to say it. Knowledge gives answers; wisdom asks questions. Knowledge can be taught, wisdom grows from experience.

If the kids get a good grasp of what the main lessons are for chess after two or three years of staying with the game, then you've given them brain food and you've given them a skill that can last them a lifetime.

Get the advice of everybody whose advice is worth having - they are very few - and then do what you think best yourself.

You can't let anybody else tell you what your choices are. Sometimes they won't give you the right choice.

Facts do not give advice.

trust your heart but use your head

Study the situation thoroughly, go over in your imagination the various courses of action possible to you and the consequences which can and may follow from each course. Pick out the course which gives the most promise and go ahead.

Yeah, leading an examined life, I always say, is a pain in the ass. It adds an element of complexity to business that most businessmen don't want to hear about. They just want to call a fabric manufacturer, and say, "Hey, give us 10,000 yards of shirting."

The man who doesn’t make up his mind to cultivate the habit of thinking misses the greatest pleasure in life.

Sometimes you have to learn how to give the right answer to the wrong question.

Anyone who still wants to experience fairytales these days can’t afford to dither when it comes to using their brains.

I think it is undeniably true that the human brain must work in models. The trick is to have your brain work better than the other person's brain because it understands the most fundamental models- ones that will do most work per unit.