I think it is terribly important to have opinions, and to think. We live in a world of action without thought.
Through their capacity to manipulate symbols and to engage in reflective thought, people can generate novel ideas and innovative actions that transcend their past experiences
What I've experienced, I'm trying to put in a narrative form, I suppose, to say that it does make sense in this way.
Most writers are trying to find what they think or feel. . . not simply working from the given, but toward the given, saying the unsayable and steadily asking, "What do I really feel about this?
Without knowing myself, I have no real basis for thinking.
The strokes of the pen need deliberation as much as the sword needs swiftness.
Slow thinking has the feeling of something you do. It's deliberate.
instant opinion is an oxymoron. You don't get real opinions in an instant. You get reactions.
For years I have been accused of making snap judgments. Honestly, this is not the case because I am a profound military student and the thoughts I express, perhaps too flippantly, are the result of years of thought and study.
Inevitably, there will be many aspects of culture that would benefit from a more reflective or contemplative approach to them.
To the man of thought almost nothing is really ridiculous.
It may be seriously questioned whether the philosophies... which isolate mind and set it over against the world did not have their origin in the fact that the reflective or theoretical class of men elaborated a large stock of ideas which social conditions did not allow them to act upon and test. Consequently men were thrown back into their own thoughts as ends in themselves.
The material of thought re-acts upon the thought itself.
The charm of the words of great men, those grand sayings which are recognized as true as soon as heard, is this, that you recognize them as wisdom which has passed across your own mind. You feel that they are your own thoughts come back to you.
