David Bohm Quotes

The main functions of intelligence, that of inventing solutions and that of verifying them, do not necessarily involve one another. The first partakes of imagination; the second alone is properly logical.

When I'm problem-solving with something, I have, effectively, a CAD program in my head that's like a room that has specific qualities to it that I go to some deal of effort to populate. Textures and smells, something like that.

An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis.

I continue to be fascinated by the fact that feelings are not just the shady side of reason but that they help us to reach decisions as well.

All great discoveries are made by men whose feelings run ahead of their thinking.

To think, and to feel, constitute the two grand divisions of men of genius - the men of reasoning and the men of imagination.

Metaphor is not just the detection of patterns; it is the creation of patterns.

In truth, every creation of the mind is first of all 'poetic' in the proper sense of the word; and inasmuch as there exists an equivalence between the modes of sensibility and intellect, it is the same function that is exercised initially in the enterprises of the poet and the scientist.

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact.

Abstraction is everybody's zero but nobody's nought.

I like feeling my way into different minds and experiences. It comes naturally and always has.

If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.

Prediction by analogy -creativity - is so pervasive we normally don't notice it.

In my own research when I'm working with equations, I never feel like I really understand what I'm doing if I'm solely relying on the mathematics for my understanding. I need to have a visual picture in my mind. I'm constantly translating from the math to some intuitive mind's-eye picture.

I think one of the important evolutions is that we no longer feel compulsively the need to argue, or to justify things on a kind of rational level. We are much more willing to admit that certain things are completely instinctive and others are really intellectual.

It is impossible to be a mathematician without being a poet in soul.

The soul never thinks without a picture.

I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner.

It's really about living in your head... just looking out at the world, then going back into your head and tossing around a lot of ideas and coming out with something interesting to say.

Feelings are at the basis of all ideas. First you have feelings, and then, through those sensations, it develops into ideas.

Invention and memory are so close together in the place they occupy in my brain.

I believe very much in sensual powers as a means of obtaining understanding.

Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.

Sometimes, I believe I actually see the wheels in my brain turning.