Cognitive Effort Quotes

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.

Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.

Movies feel like work, and reading fiction feels like work, whereas reading nonfiction feels like pleasure.

I'm no scientist, but I'll dare extrapolate and say that it's pretty obvious that the more you struggle to recall something, the smarter you are!

Most of my work is in my mind.

Thinking is the hardest work we can do, and among the most important

Too many people are too lazy to think. Instead of learning something new, they think the same thought day in day out.

I pre-suppose, of course, a reader who is willing to learn something new and therefore to think for himself.

Thinking is hard work, which is why you don't see many people doing it.

The process of reading is not a half sleep, but in the highest sense, an exercise, a gymnast's struggle: that the reader is to do something for him or herself, must be on the alert, just construct indeed the poem, argument, history, metaphysical essay--the text furnishing the hints, the clue, the start, the framework.

Wisdom is not found with those who dwell at their ease; rather nature, when she adds brain, adds difficulty.

He who thinks with difficulty believes with alacrity.

It is a nuisance that knowledge can only be acquired by hard work.

somehow at parties at which one stays standing up one seems to require to be more concentratedly intelligent than one does at those at which one can sit down.

There are very few professions in which people just sit down and think hard for five or six hours a day all by themselves. Of course it's why you want to become a writer — because you have the liberty to do that, but once you have the liberty you also have the obligation to do it.

The grinding of the intellect is for most people as painful as a dentist's drill.

Thinking is harder work than hard work.

Many persons read and like fiction. It does not tax the intelligence and the intelligence of most of us can so ill afford taxation that we rightly welcome any reading matter which avoids this.

Most people don't remember names, for the simple reason that they don't take the time and energy necessary to concentrate and repeat and fix names indelibly in their minds. They make excuses for themselves; they are too busy.

To act is easy; to think is hard.

It is always much easier, I have discovered, to make people cry or gasp than to make them think.

Thought is a strenuous art - few practice it, and then only at rare times.

I expect people to at least use some thought.

People think that talking is a sign of thinking. It isn't, for the most part' on the contrary, it's a mechanical dodge of the body to relieve oneself of the strain of thinking, just as exercising the muscles helps the body to become temporarily unconscious of its weight, its pain, its weariness, and the foreknowledge of its doom.

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