A thought is an opinion or an idea that is produced through thinking or a sudden occurrence in the mind. It is the process and action of thinking about various aspects, things, objects or people, among other ideas. Our thoughts determine what we do, act and react in our day to day lives. After someone has told you something, or after you have seen an occurrence or object, you start making up thoughts in your mind that determine how to interpret the occurrences, perceive the people, objects and ideas, and hence determine your response and reaction.
We are always thinking; whether negatively or positively, which is affected or determined by;
- What we know
- What we see and hear
- What we read
- What we do
- What we want and how we feel
These factors determines our cognitive functioning that affects our thoughts, hence determine our actions. Take an instance of a person with bad behaviors. You do not rectify the person by just changing the behaviors, an approach that changes their cognitive functioning and thinking is used to change the actions of the person and hence change the behaviors. A person who steals from others tends to have thoughts of forcefully taking away whatever impresses them. To change such a behavior, the person has to be made to have positive thoughts that taking something forcefully is an awful action.
- “One positive thought that you think in the morning can change your whole day.” – Anonymous
- “How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.” – Gilbert Keith Chesterton
- “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life, and the procedure, the process, is its own reward.” – Amelia Earhart
- “Think of your own faults the first part of the night when you are awake, and of the faults of others the latter part of the night when you are asleep.” – Chinese Proverb
- “Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.” – William O. Douglas
- “It is almost impossible to think of something no one has thought of before, but it is always possible to add different frills.” – Isaac Asimov
- “One small positive thought in the morning can change your whole entire day! Be grateful you’re alive!” – Anonymous
- “Change your thoughts and you change your world.” – Norman Vincent Peale
- “Thought is the seed of actions.” —David O. McKay
- “Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results.” – Willie Nelson
- “Who is journeying for freedom? The one who is already free. Thoughts are impediments to seeing your own face. Don’t give rise to any thought, and discover who you are.” – W. L. Poonja
- “My train of thought derailed. There were no survivors.” – Anonymous
- “We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.” – Buddha
- “Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.” – Soren Kierkegaar
- “All action results from thought, so it is thoughts that matter.” – Sai Baba
- “The illiterates of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” – AlvinToffler
- “We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.” – Swami Vivekananda
- “A man is but the product of his thoughts, what he thinks, he becomes.” – Mahatma Gandhi
- “The only thought in the world that is worth anything is free thought. To free thought we owe all past progress and all hope for the future. Since when has any one made it appear that shackled thought could get on better than that which is free? Brains are a great misfortune if one is never to use them.” – Richard Savage
- “To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.” – Henri Poincare
- “A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.” – Oscar Wilde
- “If you realized just how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought.” – Peace Pilgrim
- “You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.” – James Allen
- “Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.” – Thomas S. Szasz
- “The universe doesn’t give you what you ask for with your thoughts; it gives you what you demand with your actions.” – Steve Maraboli
- “It is neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so.” – William Shakespeare
- “You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.” – James Allen
- “Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about.” – Benjamin Lee Whorf
- “I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make more sense.” – Harold Kushner
- “Free thought means fearless thought. It is not deterred by legal penalties, nor by spiritual consequences. Dissent from the Bible does not alarm the true investigator, who takes truth for authority not authority for truth. The thinker who is really free, is independent; he is under no dread; he yields to no menace; he is not dismayed by law, nor custom, nor pulpits, nor society-whose opinion appals so many. He who has the manly passion of free thought, has no fear of anything, save the fear of error.” – George Holyoake
- “Experience is the child of Thought, and Thought is the child of Action. We cannot learn men from books.” – Benjamin Disraeli
- “At the age of 20, we don’t care what the world thinks of us; at 30, we worry about what it is thinking of us; at 40, we discover that it wasn’t thinking of us at all.” – Anonymous
- “If you think you can, you can. And if you think you can’t, you are right.” -May Kay Ash
- “What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: Our life is the creation of our mind.” – Buddha
- “The ‘how’ thinker get problems solved effectively because he wastes no time with futile ‘ifs’.” – Norman Vincent Peale
- “High thoughts must have high language.” – Aristophanes
- “As the plant springs from, and could not be without, the seed, so every act of man springs from the hidden seeds of thought, and could not have appeared without them.” – James Allen
- “If every time I thought of you, a star fell, well, the sky would be empty.” – Anonymous
- “What a wonderful thought it is that some of the best days of our lives haven’t even happened yet.” – Anne Frank
- “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” – Albert Einstein
- “It is our attitude toward free thought and free expression that will determine our fate. There must be no limit on the range of temperate discussion, no limits on thought. No subject must be taboo. No censor must preside at our assemblies.” – William O. Douglas
- “Thoughts lead on to purpose, purpose leads onto actions, actions form habits, habits decide character, and character fixes our destiny.” – Tyron Edwards
- “Anyone in a position to overcome barriers to free thought and communication should do so.” – Noam Chomsky
- “A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money.” – John Ruskin
- “Many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.” – William James
- “Thought is what makes humans human … It’s the luminous spark of reason that grants us lordship over the animals, endows us with cell phones, and offers hope, even in our darkest hours, that our species will somehow calculate the way forward to a brighter tomorrow.” – Bruno Maddox
- “The freedom of thought can not be taken away; it can only be given away.” – Anonymous
- “Your next big idea is just a thought away.” – Anonymous
- “I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.” – Albert Einstein
- “Our best thoughts come from others.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Favorite thoughts from this list include Gandhi and Emerson.