Thomas Reid Quotes

There are few things as toxic as a bad metaphor. You can't think without metaphors.

Reality is mind-made.

The Here-and-Now demands attention, is more present to us. We dismiss the inner world of our ideas as less important, although most of our immediate physical reality originated only in the mind. The TV, sofa, clock and room, the whole civilisation that contains them once were nothing save ideas.

What we experience is our own concept of things. That is why no two people see quite the same world, and why, in many cases, different people see such different worlds. To put it another way, we make our own world by the way in which we think; for we really do live in a world of our own thoughts.

Language does our thinking for us.

Metaphors think with the imagination and the senses. The hot chili peppers in them explode in the mouth and the mind.

Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings.

The influence exercised over the human mind by apt analogies is and has always been immense. Whether they translate an established truth into simple language or whether they adventurously aspire to reveal the unknown, they are among the most formidable weapons of the rhetorician.

Mind is a machine for jumping to conclusions

Metaphor is one of a group of problem-solving medicines known as figures of speech which are normally used to treat literal thinking and other diseases.

Thought rules mankind.

Mind cannot think without duality. Duality is the way of thinking. In silence, all dualities disappear.

Life in the true sense is perceiving or thinking.

It seems to me that the real problem is the mind itself and not the problem which the mind has created and tries to solve.

Writers think in metaphors. Editors work in metaphors. A great reader reads in metaphors. All are continually asking, "What does this represent? What does it stand for?" They are trying to take everything one level deeper. When they get to that level, they will try to go deeper again.

Narrowness of mind is often the cause of obstinacy; we do not easily believe beyond what we see.

What the thinker thinks, the prover proves.

The human mind has first to construct forms, independently, before we can find them in things.

Metaphor lives a secret life all around us. We utter about six metaphors a minute. Metaphorical thinking is essential to how we understand ourselves and others, how we communicate and learn, discover and invent.

Logic and truth are two very different things, but they often look the same to the mind that's performing the logic.

We make our own world by the way in which we think; for we really do live in a world of our own thoughts.

All we can go on is what we think, how we see the world. If you can't trust your own mind what can you trust?

An enlightened mind is not hoodwinked; it is not shut up in a gloomy prison till it thinks the walls of its dungeon the limits of the universe, and the reach of its own chain the outer verge of intelligence.

Smallness of mind is the cause of stubbornness, and we do not credit readily what is beyond our view.

There is no order of things except in the human mind.