Automatic Thinking Quotes

Observe yourself as you go through a typical day. Stuff happens to you. As it does, you immediately judge it and label it. Dozens of times. Hundreds of times. So often that you no longer recognize that you're doing it. It is a deep-seated habit.

Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without any effort many things they would find too difficult to think through to the point of resolving to do them.

It's the way the human brain works: when enough events occur in a pattern, we stop thinking and go into macro mode.

Language does our thinking for us.

Machine thinking is the opposite of mindfulness. If we're really engaged in mindfulness when walking along the path to the village, then we will consider the act of each step we take as an infinite wonder, and a joy will open our hearts like a flower, enabling us to enter the world of reality.

As soon as you hear a proposition, the creative brain in humans assumes for the moment that it's true, and starts trying to find evidence. It's what computer scientists in the old days used to call 'Fifo:' first in, first out. The first piece of information that gets in has a privileged position, even if it's misinformation.

The story of the subconscious mind can be told in three words: there is none.

The vast majority of people are unthinking prejudice machines.

Thoughts come into our minds by avenues which we never left open, and thoughts go out of our minds through avenues which we never voluntarily opened.

I wouldn't say we were doing that. I think we probably stopped thinking. Though it took a while to stop thinking.

The mind thinks thoughts that we don't plan. It's not as if we say, 'At 9:10 I'm going to be filled with self-hatred.

It was a pity thoughts always ran the easiest way, like water in old ditches.

As soon as someone is coming from New York, I automatically think I have to get dressed up.

Thinking without awareness is the main dilemma of human existence.

Most of the time, we think fast. And most of the time we're really expert at what we're doing, and most of the time, what we do is right.

The brain's calculations do not require our conscious effort, only our attention and our openness to let the information through. Although the brain absorbs universes of information, little is admitted into normal consciousness.

We are primarily the products of thinking that happens below the level of awareness.