Samuel Johnson Quotes

To meditate is to observe yourself, for you are totally responsible for your body, mind, thought.

There is a distinct difference between having an open mind and having a hole in your head from which your brain leaks out.

All too often, when it comes to our own minds, we are surprisingly mindless. We sail on, blithely unaware of how much we are missing, of how little we grasp of our own thought process - and how much better we could be if only we'd taken the time to understand and to reflect.

Doubt your doubts before you doubt your beliefs.

To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one's thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one's mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.

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 I write down my thoughts, they do not escape me. This action makes me remember my strength which I forget at all times. I educate myself proportionately to my captured thought. I aim only to distinguish the contradiction between my mind and nothingness.

Watch the functioning of your own mind in a calm and detached manner so you can gain insight into your own behavior.

Meditation is a rich and powerful method of study for anyone who knows how to examine his mind.

The first proof of a well-ordered mind is to be able to pause and linger within itself.

The most important conversations, briefings, meeting, and lectures you will ever have will be those you hold with yourself in the privacy of your own mind.

Openness of mind strengthens the truth in us and removes the dross from it, if there is any.

Learn to know yourself... to search realistically and regularly the processes of your own mind and feelings.

Since we think about ourselves so much of the time, it is comforting to assume ... that we really know the score.... [But] this is not an easy assignment. [As] Santayana wrote, 'Nothing requires a rarer intellectual heroism than willingness to see one's equation written out.'

First Sight means you can see what really is there, and Second Thoughts mean thinking about what you are thinking. And in Tiffany's case, there were sometimes Third Thoughts and Fourth Thoughts although these...sometimes led her to walk into doors.

The first step is learning to monitor your thoughts; to think about what you are thinking about.

After all, without understanding yourself, what basis have you for right thinking?

I want to clear my mind a little bit and give my mind a little bit of time to breathe so I can pinpoint or at least nail down feelings I'm having and that I've had for the last however long. I need to nail them down long enough to actually write about and elaborate on them.

The more intense the nature of a man, the more readily will he find meditation, and the more successfully will he practice it.

Our thoughts are certainly part of us; they come from us, but we are not our thoughts. Have you ever woken up in the morning and said to yourself, 'I am not going to think today; I am too tired'? No, of course not. Just as breathing happens and is constant, thoughts happen, and they are also constant.

Irony is the hygiene of the mind.

Writing is a very focused form of meditation. Just as good as sitting in a lotus position.

The object of studying philosophy is to know one's own mind, not other people's.

Self-awareness is the ability to take an honest look at your life without any attachment to it being right or wrong, good or bad.

I'm trying to make work that is reflective and is encouraging of reflection.