Thoughts for the Thinker

"All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions."Leonardo da Vinci

"The future is not some place we are going to but one we are creating. The paths are not to be
found, but made, and the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination."
John Schaar, Political Scientist,
University of Santa Clara
Author, Loyalty in America

"The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a
matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advances....."
Albert Einstein

"When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself."
Plato

"When we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings."
Wendell Berry


"Too often students begin each new task as if it were being approached for the very first time. Teachers are often dismayed when they invite students to recall how they solved a similar problem previously and students don't remember...Their thinking is what psychologists refer to as an "episodic grasp of reality" (Feuerstein 1980). That is, each event in life is a separate and discrete event with no connections to what may have come before or with no relation to what follows. Furthermore, their learning is so encapsulated that they seem unable to draw forth from one event and apply it in another context."

All quotes are found in http://www.habits-of-mind.net/