Cognitive Struggle Quotes

Profanity is the effort of a feeble brain to express itself forcibly.

War starts in the mind, not in the body.

I’m trying to think of one.

You don't know what it is to stay a whole day with your head in your hands trying to squeeze your unfortunate brain so as to find a word.

Sometimes it feels like I'm thinking against the wind.

The origin of thinking is some perplexity, confusion or doubt.

You know, like, real paying attention and real observation and deep thought and deep consideration can be a bit, you know, miserable-making.

Very little comes easily to our poor, benighted species (the first creature, after all, to experiment with the novel evolutionary inventions of self-conscious philosophy and art). Even the most "obvious," "accurate," and "natural" style of thinking or drawing must be regulated by history and won by struggle. Solutions must therefore arise within a social context and record the complex interactions of mind and environment that define the possibility of human improvement.

The incessant struggle of the mind to be true to itself, to absorb new truths, to grow, to overcome pressures--these are the painful portion of the independent thinker. Almost his sole reward is the satisfaction of integrity.

It is a rare privilege to watch the birth, growth, and first feeble struggles of a living mind; this privilege is mine.

It was all in my head and now all I had to do was figure out a way to get it down on paper.

I have resolved to pick one novel and just read it over and over again for the rest of my life, because I cannot remember anything anymore.

I don't know how to organise thoughts. I don't know how to have thoughts.

I'm way more in my head acting than I am when I'm writing. So there's a weird love/hate on both ends. But writing, as tough as it is, I get so much more out of it. It's like climbing Mt. Everest.

Tall, aren't you?" she said. "I didn't mean to be." Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her.

When I had jobs, I was always doing manual jobs because I couldn't think. I worked at the docks, unloading trucks, and did ridiculous jobs.

We would work up a tune that would make me learn a drum pattern I hadn't played before. In the early stages, the pattern wouldn't just fall into place, and I would start thinking about it. And the more I thought about it, the worse it would get.

I've got a war in my mind

It's hard for me to shut off my writer brain completely.

My heart was broken and my head was just barely inhabitable

Inner conflict is really fun to play because there's a lot going on, and the choices - when you've got a character with internal conflict - the choices you make have broader ramifications because they have inner ramifications and ramifications in the world.

He lost himself in a maze of thoughts that were rendered vague by his lack of words to express them. Frowning, he tried again.

Alas, why does my mind have to walk through the dust of the past every day?

We shall succeed only so far as we continue to undertake “the intolerable labor of thought” — that most distasteful of all our activities.