Cognitive Restraint Quotes

Man's great misfortune is that he has no organ, no kind of eyelid or brake, to mask or block a thought, or all thought, when he wants to.

There are thoughts we must not think.

Don't allow your animal nature to rule your reason.

The idea was to have a basin inverted on his head and his hair cut to the shape of it. Skill and money were not needed. Then the idea grew that it was more convenient to leave the basin on his head. Stray thoughts were trimmed along with stray hair; brain-vines, tentacles of thought, were not encouraged to wander. Then, in the interests of human economy, the head of adaptable man became a basin of uniform shape—a basin, a crash helmet. Safe at last; no more thought-cuts.

Our minds can come up with the most entertaining possibilities, if we let them. But most of the time, we keep them under far too close a check.

Wrong believing puts people in a prison. Even though there are no physical shackles, wrong believing causes its inmates to behave as though they were incarcerated in a maximum-security penitentiary.

Compulsion is a behaviour that short-circuits you out of feeling ashamed, and then you feel triple-ashamed afterwards.

A lot of people do impulsive things. They just go with their moves. I used to do that. Once I was able to control my mind, I was able to control my actions.

I think of myself as someone with a kind of Tourette's. I cannot help saying the thing you're not supposed to say.

What I really found myself interested in was the idea that our minds our so powerful and when we're living, the mind is dampened by the body. As crazy as our minds can get, they're only so crazy because they're physically housed.

the appetite for thinking must be regulated, as all sensible people know, for it may stifle one's life.

The human mind is impelled to action, or held in rest by some power, over which the mind itself has no control.

I don't dare start thinking in the morning. I don't dare start thinking in the morning. If I thought thoughts in bed, Them thoughts would bust my head-- So I don't dare start thinking in the morning.

It's no good telling somebody they're trying too hard. It's very much like ordering a child to go stand in a corner for a half hour and never once think about elephants.

I will simply express my strong belief, that that point of self-education which consists in teaching the mind to resist its desires and inclinations, until they are proved to be right, is the most important of all, not only in things of natural philosophy, but in every department of dally life.