Thought Regulation Quotes

Democratic societies can't force people. Therefore they have to control what they think.

The liberty of thinking and publishing whatsoever each one likes, without any hindrances, is not in itself an advantage over which society can wisely rejoice. On the contrary, it is the fountainhead and origin of many evils.

There are thoughts we must not think.

The problem is to keep the monkey mind from running off into all kinds of thoughts.

In real life, I know to filter all my jerk opinions and my jerk thoughts and my jerk desires.

Racing thoughts was the biggest hurdle to consistent meditation for me. I could sit down, but then I was left with this interior world of thoughts.

We cannot always control our thoughts, but we can control our words, and repetition impresses the subconscious, and we are then master of the situation.

Man is so made that by continually telling him he is a fool he believes it, and by continually telling it to himself he makes himself believe it. For man holds an inward talk with himself, which it pays him to regulate.

The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.

And if thought and emotion can persist in this way so long after the brain that sent them forth has crumpled into dust, how vitally important it must be to control their very birth in the heart, and guard them with the keenest possible restraint.

Meditation is difficult for many people because their thoughts are always on some distant object or place. One form of meditation is to label the thought as it appears and then choose to let it go.

Some people have a mistaken idea that all thoughts disappear through meditation and we enter a state of blankness. There certainly are times of great tranquility when concentration is strong and we have few, if any, thoughts. But other times, we can be flooded with memories, plans or random thinking. It's important not to blame yourself.

A theory that denies that thoughts can regulate actions does not lend itself readily to the explanation of complex human behavior.

My thoughts are my company; I can bring them together, select them, detain them, dismiss them.

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

It is pretty clear that they are ineffective in stopping the course of thought at present, but they have not always been so in the past and we cannot be sure that they will not be so in the future.

Control of thought is more important for governments that are free and popular than for despotic and military states. The logic is straightforward: a despotic state can control its domestic enemies by force, but as the state loses this weapon, other devices are required to prevent the ignorant masses from interfering with public affairs, which are none of their business… the public are to be observers, not participants, consumers of ideology as well as products.

We have to push aside what generally concerns us most in our thought life, namely, the content of our thoughts, and learn instead to make conscious use of the element of will in our thinking.

Are we controlled by our thoughts, or are we controlling our thoughts?