Cognitive Activity Quotes

Thinking is the activity I love best, and writing to me is simply thinking through my fingers. I can write up to 18 hours a day. Typing 90 words a minute, I've done better than 50 pages a day. Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up-well, maybe once.

My brain's always working, and gears are turning 24/7. So I was trying to think of solutions.

'Penny for Your Thoughts' was something I noodled on for a while.

A mind always employed is always happy.

Fundamental ideas are not a consequence of experience, but a result of the particular constitution and activity of the mind, which is independent of all experience in its origin, though constantly combined with experience in its exercise.

There is no reason to believe ... that the "essential purpose" of language is "communication". Language can be used to transmit information, but it also serves many other purposes: to establish relations among people, to express or clarify thought, for play, for creative mental activity, to gain understanding, and so on. In my opinion, there is no reason to accord privileged status to one or the other of these modes.

For me, the glory of the human animal is cognitive activity.

Any work is creative work if done by a thinking mind.

There's no such thing as downtime for your brain.

All action results from thought, so it is thoughts that matter.

Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.

One of the nice things about books as opposed to television and movies to some extent is it's not a passive entertainment. People really do get involved, and they do create, and they do have their own visions of what different characters look like and what should happen. It's great - it means their brains are working.

Ideas are things that happen at any time because you're constantly thinking and evaluating life as if it were an eternally unsolvable math problem, which it is.

It's good to make your brain work more than your body.

Labor is life; thought is light.

Thinking very often resembles napping, but the intent is different. --Stephanie Plum

Here's something that's contrary to popular belief: I actually don't like thinking. I think people think I like to think a lot. And I don't. I do not like to think at all.

I do the 'New York Times' crossword puzzle every morning to keep the old grey matter ticking.

Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery - it recharges by running.

Ideas do not exist apart from the men and women who create them.

Handwriting is civilization's casual encephalogram.

I get bored quite easily, so I like to keep my mind entertained by challenging myself.

People think I watch TV too much, but they are wrong. There is a huge difference between merely "watching" TV and learning to respond aggressively to it. The difference, for most people, is the difference between the living and dying of their own brains.

Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything.

Beauty can't amuse you, but brainwork - reading, writing, thinking - can.