Samuel Alexander Quotes

No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.

Rational behavior requires theory. Reactive behavior requires only reflex action.

Slow thinking has the feeling of something you do. It's deliberate.

I take a role because it makes sense to me, rationally.

I think each player and myself live things differently because I have no physical effort to make.

We cannot therefore say that mental acts contain a cognitive as well as a conative element.

When people ask me what I do, strangers on a plane, perhaps, I tell them that I think. Thinking is excellent exercise, as much as swimming or jogging.

My brain's always working, and gears are turning 24/7. So I was trying to think of solutions.

My lab is the place where I put my brain out on my fingers.

I definitely have to focus more and think more on what exactly I'm doing, rather than just use my athleticism.

Thinking. This book contains some. Whether you try it at home is up to you.

The best part of human language, properly so called, is derived from reflection on the acts of the mind itself.

Between repetition and forgetting, it is a marvel that a new thought ever struggles into existence.

For, strictly considered, what is all Knowledge too but recorded Experience, and a product of History; of which, therefore, Reasoning and Belief, no less than Action and Passion, are essential materials?

Be a practical dreamer backed by action.

I think there is a great deal to the idea of not doing a thing, but that when you do a thing, you don't do it in five minutes or in five hours, but in five years.

Many people mistakenly suppose that the essence of consciousness is that of a control mechanism

A reader does not suddenly comprehend what is being read or studied, in a snap, miraculously. Comprehension needs to be worked forged, by those who read and study; as subjects of the action, they must seek to employ appropriate instruments in order to carry out the task. For this very reason, reading and studying form a challenging task, one requiring patience and perseverance.

But opinions, judgments, memories, dreaming about the future—ninety percent of the thoughts spinning around in our heads have no essential reality.

The mind is a kind of theater, where several perceptions successively make their appearence; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations.

Experience teaches us that thought does not express itself in words, but rather realizes itself in them

What do we mean by "knowledge" or "understanding"? And how do billions of neurons achieve them? These are complete mysteries. Admittedly, cognitive neuroscientists are still very vague about the exact meaning of words like "understand," "think," and indeed the word "meaning" itself.

It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.

My definition of success? The more you are actively and practically engaged, the more successful you will feel.