Stanislaw Ulam Quotes

The mind is like a richly woven tapestry in which the colors are distilled from the experiences of the senses, and the design drawn from the convolutions of the intellect.

Is it not the play of the mind we are after? Is it not that that shows a mind is there at all?

Thought makes everything fit for use.

Concepts are mental images.

Thought is prior to language and consists in the simultaneous presentation to the mind of two different images.

We are thinking beings, and we cannot exclude the intellect from participating in any of our functions.

We get to experience the same thing in very different ways with different parts of ourselves.

Everyone gets meaning in different ways.

In our ability to think about something differently lies the power to make it different.

Thought is the organizing factor in man, intersected between the causal primary instincts and the resulting actions.

Do not let the rapidity with which these thoughts can change deceive you into feeling that you think them all at once.

Cognition reigns but does not rule.

You can think your way into or out of almost any circumstance, good or bad.

Someday, Dante, I will discover how your mind works

I know I'm prejudiced and I know I'm bigoted in a lot of different ways.

I enjoy hearing the way people think. I always have.

...is the carbon molecule lined with thought?

Thinking is a bit uncomfortable, but you'll get used to it. A matter of time and practice.

You have to CHANGE the way you THINK in order to CHANGE the way you FEEL

If thinking is like perceiving, it must be either a process in which the soul is acted upon by what is capable of being thought, or a process different from but analogous to that. The thinking part of the soul must therefore be, while impassable, capable of receiving the form of an object; that is, must be potentially identical in character with its object without being the object. Mind must be related to what is thinkable, as sense is to what is sensible.

Everything hangs on one's thinking.

First, then, I say, that the mind, which we often call the intellect, in which is placed the conduct and government of life, is not less an integral part of man himself, than the hand, and foot, and eyes, are portions of the whole animal.

The way you think determines the way you feel, and the way you feel determines the way you act.

The psychologists and the metaphysicians wrangle endlessly over the nature of the thinking process in man, but no matter how violently they differ otherwise they all agree that it has little to do with logic and is not much conditioned by overt facts.

Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot or will not exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.