Sherry Turkle Quotes

When I was in lower school, I graduated from fourth grade, and the principal gave us a summer assignment to take a 30-minute reflection period every day. And, of course, there were no cell phones at the time. She said to just think. And that's lost. It doesn't exist anymore. Just imagine being on a couch and just thinking.

A lot of, a big problems that people have nowadays is that they can't stand moments of no stimulation in their life so they're constantly lurking, looking for entertainment, video games.

I'm only asking you to stop every so often and turn off your mobile device, put down the Angry Birds and the Words with Friends and take a moment. Stop to look up and look around. Pause and check in with yourself - and spend a moment there.

One thing that's interesting to me is how we as humans seem to be losing our ability to stand still and be alone with our thoughts. If you want to, you have to arrange it now. You have to go off where there's no WiFi and leave your equipment behind, but still have some sort of GPS tracking to make sure you don't get lost or die.

We've lost our way, we have lost our centeredness. We don't have the time, literally, to think during the day. To listen to ourselves think. To think about where we are going, who we are, what's important. I would bet most people don't have thirty minutes in a day where they can just sit down and think. Or maybe they don't have to be sitting, they can be walking.

For me, writing is a way of thinking. I write in a journal a lot. I'm a very impatient person, so writing and meditation allow me to slow down and watch my mind; they are containers that keep me in place, hold me still.

When there are thoughts, it is distraction: when there are no thoughts, it is meditation.

The moment of drifting into thought has been so clipped by modern technology. Our lives are filled with distraction with smartphones and all the rest. People are so locked into not being present.

Never be afraid to sit a while and think.

Doing nothing means unplugging from the compulsion to always keep ourselves busy, the habit of shielding ourselves from certain feelings, the tension of trying to manipulate our experience before we even fully acknowledge what that experience is.

In a strange way, I feel like we need to cultivate more boredom in our lives: like, boredom needs to be okay again. It needs to be seen as a good thing, and I think it's definitely a good thing for relationships.

Quiet time and solitude are vital to helping me keep perspective. I consider myself fortunate to have so much quiet built into my profession. I spend long hours by myself at my easel. And while I work, I think-of the future, of my loved ones, of God's goodness and the many exciting opportunities that surround me. I ponder the challenges I face, the needs of others, the direction my life is going.

Even painfully shy and awkward people are not painfully shy or awkward when they are alone. The way to access this natural, comfortable alone-self when you are with others is by choosing to forbid yourself to wonder what "they" are thinking. Instead, force yourself to exist in the instant, then take it- and give it- as it comes.

I think talent has a huge amount to do with concentration, concentration rather than the athletic ability of your neurons. If you can concentrate on an esoteric piece of math, how can you think about the rest of your life? That's why people can leave their car keys in the gutter; they're in the midst of obsession and concentration.

Our worlds needs more time to wonder and reflect but there is too much fast paced constant distraction.

From three to four, he planned to stand perfectly still and think of what it was like to be alive.

Some people observe life naturally and sometimes you just have to let things out and think about it later.

Meditation is not contemplation because it is not thinking at all - consistent, inconsistent, crazy, sane. It is not thinking at all; it is witnessing. It is just sitting silently deep within yourself, looking at whatsoever is happening inside and outside both. Outside there is traffic noise, inside there is also traffic noise - the traffic in the head. So many thoughts - trucks and buses of thoughts and trains and airplanes of thoughts, rushing in every direction. But you are simply sitting aloof, unconcerned, watching everything with no evaluation.

We switch to another language-- not our invented language or the language we've learned from our lives. As we walk further up the mountain, we speak the language of silence. This language gives us time to think and move. We can be here and elsewhere at the same time.

Whenever you step out of the noise of thinking, that is meditation, and a different state of consciousness arises.

The sole cause of all human misery is the inability of people to sit quietly in their rooms.

Contemplation is the loving sense of this life, this presence and this eternity.

People really get myopic as they get older. We're not a culture that encourages dreaming or distraction. We're not ever good at just being. I remember reading some Adrienne Rich quote where she talks about how important it was just to watch bubbles rise in a glass.

Most people when they're walking are thinking about where they have to go and what they have to do. But that removes us from happiness.

In this modern world where activity is stressed almost to the point of mania, quietness as a childhood need is too often overlooked. Yet a child's need for quietness is the same today as it has always been--it may even be greater--for quietness is an essential part of all awareness. In quiet times and sleepy times a child can dwell in thoughts of his own, and in songs and stories of his own.