Thoughts

The thought must always be clear, only perceptions are unclear.

Obscurely said, it is obscurely thought.

Everything I can think, I can think clearly. All that I can say, I can say clearly. But all that I can think, I cannot say.

Strong is the man who has only one idea.

Reflecting gives me the opportunity to organize my thoughts.

Organize your thoughts, and you will notice that there are not so many of them.

I think that eighty percent of people go through their lives without having a single original idea of their own.

It is with ideas as with small children. I like my own best.

Our thoughts limit our world.

The limits of my language are equal to the limits of my world.

Thoughts are poison, the more I think, the less I accomplish.

When you notice that a man has great thoughts about himself, you can be sure that they are the only great thoughts he has had in his whole life.

The idea of the future is more fruitful than the future itself.

Visions are the ideas of the future.

An idea is a thought that remained standing.

Be careful what you say, before you say what you think.

The speech of the drunkard is the thoughts of the sober.

Wisdom

The wise man seeks wisdom, the fool has already found it.

You are wise as long as you seek wisdom. The moment you think you've found it, you become a loser.

He who asks many questions increases the wisdom of many.

Wisdom has long ears and a short tongue.

Wisdom begins only after the exchange of opinions.

Anyone can know. The purpose is to understand.

Understanding often achieves more than reason.

The extreme limits of wisdom - it is often called madness.

The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.

Actually, I only know when I know a little. With the knowledge, my doubt grows.

Only the wise have ideas, for most of us people ideas are an obsession.

Life wisdom consists primarily in the ability to ignore what is not important.

The wise make proverbs, the foolish repeat them.

Stinginess betrays wisdom.

Caution is the way to wisdom.

Cowards call pessimism wisdom.

Young men think they are wise enough, just as drunkards think they are sober enough.

Only the ignorant gets angry. The wise understands.

Why it's called "sound sense", because it's not contagious.

Ways of thinking

Curiosity is a natural craving of the brain.

It's one thing to believe that I think right myself, and quite another to think that everyone else thinks wrong.

For things to reveal themselves to us, we must be willing to abandon our opinions about them.

Imagination often takes us to worlds that don't exist, but without imagination we go nowhere.

The ability to see or think differently is more important than acquired knowledge.

The ability to think differently today than yesterday separates the wise from the stubborn.

Logic is a systematic way of coming to false conclusions convincingly.

Antipathy analyzes better, but only sympathy understands.

Common sense is the gatekeeper of thought; its task is not to let in or out ideas of questionable appearance.

Worry less about what others think of you and more about what you think of others.

My conclusion on the matter was at the point when I got tired of thinking more about the matter.

Thinking against the prevailing is brave. To speak against it is complete madness.

Thought sentences don't have to be thinking. You can entertain yourself with them. In other words, a kind of sequel to lullabies.

Hope is usually a poor guide, but a very good traveling companion.

What is called optimism is often the result of inadequate thinking.

Idealism increases in direct proportion to increased distance from the problem.

A cynic draws bitter conclusions from the past, he also draws cynical conclusions about the future.

I shouldn't think too much. There is a risk that I will create problems that did not even exist.

It was simple, say many when they meet and realize a genius idea.

Justifying something is like starting to sow doubts about it.

Only our doubts grow over the years, not our convictions.

Ignorance makes us bold, experience makes us hesitate and doubt.

What you resist determines how you become.

The worst way to get ideas is to chase them.

Do not deceive yourself, because it is easiest for you to deceive yourself.

Seek simplicity and distrust it.

To generalize is the same as being an idiot.

There is nothing truly simple, there are only simplifications.

Before you're really sure of one thing, you're absolutely sure.

The fault with the world is that the stupid are so sure of everything - and the wise so full of doubt.

If you only have a hammer, all problems look like nails.

Think the opposite.

Reading, after a while, leads to your thinking from its creative task. If you read too much, you use too little of your own brain and thus get lazy ways of thinking.

Reading is thinking with someone else's brain instead of your own.

Don't live in the past, don't dream about the future, but concentrate on the present.

Incompetence is manifested in the use of too many words.

If you yourself, guided by your own conscience, have learned to distinguish between good and evil, right and wrong, public opinion has no value.

Where everyone thinks alike, no one thinks very much.

In a group, stupidity is condensed. Among those who fully agree, stupidity has petrified.

The things you risk reveal the things you value.

Only idiots never change their mind.  

To err 

The optimist is probably as often wrong as the pessimist, but he has more fun.

Admitting your mistake proves that you are wiser today than yesterday.

To err is human, and it is even more human to blame others for it.

There is no greater mistake than to jump to the conclusion that an opinion is worthless because it is poorly supported by arguments.

Intuition refers to the immediate ability of some people to misjudge the situation.

Each of us can be mistaken, but only fools persist in their delusion.

You never have to be ashamed to admit that you were wrong. In other words, that you are wiser today than yesterday.

The incorrect basic assumption remains visible in the conclusions.  

Beliefs

Of your illusions you know only the broken ones.

The most dangerous of our prejudices is our belief that we have none.

Many people think they are thinking, when in fact they are just sorting through their prejudices.

So-called common sense is a collection of prejudices, which we have acquired, already up to the age of eighteen.

Visionary sees things that are invisible to others.

An ideal is often nothing more than a brilliant vision of the truth.

Excessive hopes cause the greatest disappointment.

The last illusion is to believe that you have lost everything.

There is no illusion so dangerous as the one you think is a disappointment.

Time changes people, but not the image I have of them.

The optimist believes that the future is uncertain.

If you believe in your dreams, it's as if you go through your life in sleep.

An opinion is not necessarily right, just that someone is willing to die for it.

Don't let the noise of other people's opinions drown out your own inner voice.

Opinions are like nails. Easy to hit in, but hard to pull off.

Changing our opinion often requires more courage from us than staying true to it.

A sensible person has never regarded a change of opinion as a loss of permanence.

Changing your mind is not a crime.

A man who is ready to die for an ideology, demands, that the ideology is not completely clear to him.

Heresy is just another name for freedom of thought.

It's hard to be a heretic. You have to think about everything yourself.

We see clearly backwards, dimly in the present and are blind to the future.

Modesty is indifference and comfort of the soul.

Miscellaneous 

Words must be weighed, not counted.

Interpretation is the intellect's revenge on art.

The aphorism is often based on malice and analysis.

Time heals what reason cannot.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Ideal are lighthouses, not harbors.

Everything can be divided into as many parts as you like.

The optimist declares that we live in the best of all possible worlds and the pessimist fears that the optimist is right.

Many wish to change the world, but few think of changing themselves.

If you choose not to decide, you have made a decision.

Nothing reveals your character more clearly than things you find ridiculous.

Listen to reason, otherwise it will painfully remind you.

Mastering another language is like having another soul.

Any fool can criticize, and many do.

Boring idleness can be useful. Maybe that way you will come up with something to do or come up with completely new things.

If you want the Lord to smile, then tell your future plans.

Simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication.

There are no limits to what people can come up with when they lack imagination.

It is convenient not to know myself, then I will not be disappointed.

Every time I stand on the side of the majority, it's time for me to pause and think.

When I finally accept myself as I am, I might not be that way anymore.

I can't stand intolerant people.

It's flattering when someone tells me exactly what I think about myself.

Originality does not consist in saying something that no one has said before, but in saying exactly what you think.

[Ajatukset]