Johan Huizinga Quotes

Analysis and synthesis are both as necessary to the thinking spirit as inspiration and expiration to the organism.

I don't really get things very... intuitively. I mean, I don't immediately understand things. The only way I really get it is by writing it down.

Key metaphors help determine what and how we perceive and how we think about our perceptions.

Intellectuals are good at seeing the big picture. But they are not so good at process.

WHAT a person thinks is determined by HOW a person thinks.

Since you got here by not thinking, it seems reasonable to expect that, in order to get out, you must start thinking.

Without analysis, no synthesis.

Intuition and concepts constitute... the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.

Intelligence is the ability to take in information from the world and to find patterns in that information that allow you to organize your perceptions and understand the external world.

They are deceptively simple. I admit that. But for me, all my life I try to simplify things. As a child in school, things were very hard for me to understand often, and I developed a knack, I think. I developed a process to simplify things so I would understand them.

All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable, which makes you see something you weren't noticing, which makes you see something that isn't even visible.

Perspective is worth 80 IQ points.

I am basically analytical, not creative; my writing is simply a creative way of handling analysis.

The analysis of the thing is not the thing itself.

To solve a problem it is necessary to think. It is necessary to think even to decide what facts to collect.

Get the habit of analysis - analysis will in time enable synthesis to become your habit of mind.

Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open.

Let us gather facts in order to get ourselves thinking.

I am never satisfied until I can make a mathematical model of what I am studying. If I succeed in making one, I understand. If I cannot, I do not understand.

People often say, 'I like your comics, even though I don't know enough math to get all of them,' as if it's some kind of club where they don't belong. But there's no club. There's just lots of people who are excited about thinking, learning, joking, and sometimes overanalyzing things.

What I knew was I liked math and science, and I never wanted to memorize everything. I wanted to understand where it came from.

Thinking isn't something you think about. It comes naturally. Thinking involves many things. It involves being an observer. It involves analyzing things, taking in what's around you in the world and finding how to make it inspire your work or turn it into a lesson to teach your children; it's paying attention to details. That's what thinking is: processing.

The entire method consists in the order and arrangement of the things to which the mind's eye must turn so that we can discover some truth.

You must think. The eye is not enough; it needs to think as well.

If you don't ask the right question, every answer seems wrong -