Cognitive Resonance Quotes

Sometimes I sensed that the books I read in rapid succession had set up some sort of murmur among themselves, transforming my head into an orchestra pit where different musical instruments sounded out, and I would realize that I could endure this life because of these musicales going on in my head.

The faster the word sticks to the thought, the more beautiful is the effect.

It said what he would have said, if it had been possible for him to set his scattered thoughts in order. It was the product of a mind similar to his own, but enormously more powerful, more systematic, less fear-ridden. The best books, he perceived, are those that tell you what you know already.

Gide and I have attained such perfect intellectual communion that I experience the appropriate labor pains for every thought he gives birth to!

The high intellectual value of images, however, lies in the fact that they usually, and perhaps always, fit more than one actual experience.

Waves of thought are stirring. In a twilight corner of her consciousness, one tiny fragment and another tiny fragment call out wordlessly to eachother, their spreading ripples intermingling.

Music contains a whole gamut of experience, from sensuous elements to ultimate intellectual harmonies.

I believe that in every person is a kind of circuit which resonates to intellectual discovery-and the idea is to make that resonance work

Every human brain is both a broadcasting and receiving station for the vibration of thought.

Words outlive people, institutions, civilizations. Words spur images, associations, memories, inspirations and synapse pulsations. Words send off physical resonations of thought into the nethersphere. Words hurt, soothe, inspire, demean, demand, incite, pacify, teach, romance, pervert, unite, divide. Words be powerful.

Some men's words I remember so well that I must often use them to express my thought. Yes, because I perceive that we have heard the same truth, but they have heard it better.

Genius speaks only to genius.

Neither facts nor pictures seem to sink into our centers of feeling any more.

What we hear while we are asleep continues to resonate with us upon awakening.

We are what we are, because of the vibrations of thought which we pick up and register, through the stimuli of our daily environment.

No matter how brilliantly an idea is stated, we will not really be moved unless we have already half thought of it ourselves.

Generally speaking, men are influenced by books which clarify their own thought, which express their own notions well, or which suggest to them ideas which their minds are already predisposed to accept

That others grasp what I have in mind seems unessential, at least as long as they have something else in theirs.

Great stories agree with our worldview. The best stories don't teach people anything new. Instead the best stories agree with what the audience already believes and makes the members of the audience feel smart and secure when reminded how right they were in the thirst place.

I believe that writing on music is experienced inside your head, is not a physically present in the world, it has a different kind of authority and prominence and you absorb it differently.