Francis Galton Quotes

Some of the best writing I've done, whether I'm shooting a story or thinking of a script, I write it in my head as I'm running. Running literally jogs my brain.

I find it easier to tell someone what's in my head once it's on paper, rather than write with someone in mind.

Suppose we think while we talk or write--I mean, as we normally do--we shall not in general say that we think quicker than we talk, but the thought seems not to be separate from the expression.

I'm often asked what I think about as I run. Usually the people who ask this have never run long distances themselves. I always ponder the question. What exactly do I think about when I'm running? I don't have a clue.

Writing helped me understand what I was thinking about.

Mathematicians may flatter themselves that they possess new ideas which mere human language is as yet unable to express. Let them make the effort to express these ideas in appropriate words without the aid of symbols, and if they succeed they will not only lay us laymen under a lasting obligation, but, we venture to say, they will find themselves very much enlightened during the process, and will even be doubtful whether the ideas as expressed in symbols had ever quite found their way out of the equations into their minds.

I don't think there is any scientific evidence about the question of whether we think only in language or not. But introspection indicates pretty clearly that we don't think in language necessarily. We also think in visual images, we think in terms of situations and events, and so on, and many times we can't even express in words what the content of our thinking is. And even if we are able to express it in words, it is a common experience to say something and then to recognize that it is not what we meant, that it is something else.

There is a kind of nonlinguistic thought going on which we are trying to represent in language, and we know that sometimes we fail.

[There are] unseen objects that await us, if we as architects begin to think about designing not the object, but a process to generate objects.

The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren't there. The answers are there in the morning.

I always think that when we actors talk about the films that we've done we run the risk of destroying everything.

Feelings, and feelings, and feelings. Let me try thinking instead.

The mind's job is to validate what it thinks.

I don't know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down and try to write about them.

Thinking in pictures is, therefore, only a very incomplete form of becoming conscious. In some way, too, it stands nearer to unconscious processes than does thinking in words, and it is unquestionably older than the latter both ontogenetically and phylogenetically.

When anything important has to be written ... I think your hand concentrates for you.

Let an idea swim to the surface like a fish in a pool...let the mind drift to the vision.

It's always been most important for me to figure out "my space" rather than trying to check out what everyone else is up to, minute by minute. Technology is making it easier to connect to other people, but maybe harder to keep connected to yourself-- and that's essential for any artist, I think.

I could not think without writing.

The thought process can never be complete without articulation.

There are days now where I think, "Oh man, that would've been a great entry," but I'm putting the pen down until I clear my head, or think of another book idea.

Writing at least is a silent meditation even though you’re going a hundred miles an hour.

Instead of being lost in your thinking, when you awaken you recognize yourself as the awareness behind it. Thinking then ceases to be a self-serving autonomous activity that takes possession of you and runs your life.

When I run into a paradox I think either I'm a total horse's ass to have gotten to this point, or I'm fruitfully near the edge of my discipline. It adds excitement to life to wonder which it is.

I love watching him think," Maeve told Lily. "You can almost hear that poor little hamster running and running on its wheel.