Thought Experiments Quotes

Science fiction is essentially a kind of fiction in which people learn more about how to live in the real world, visiting imaginary worlds unlike our own, in order to investigate by way of pleasurable thought-experiments how things might be done differently. ~ Brian Stableford

From a philosophical point of view, Leibniz's most interesting argument was that absolute space conflicted with what he called the principle of the identity of indiscernibles (PII). PII says that if two objects are indiscernible, then they are identical, i.e. they are really one and the same object. What does it mean to call two objects indiscernible? It means that no difference at all can be found between them--they have exactly the same attributes. So if PII is true, then any two genuinely distinct objects must differ in at least one of their attributes--otherwise they would be one, not two. PII is intuitively quite compelling. It certainly is not easy to find an example of two distinct objects that share all their attributes. Even two mass-produced factory goods will normally differ in innumerable ways, even if the differences cannot be detected with the naked eye.

Leibniz asks us to imagine two different universes, both containing exactly the same objects. In Universe One, each object occupies a particular location in absolute space.In Universe Two, each object has been shifted to a different location in absolute space, two miles to the east (for example). There would be no way of telling these two universes apart. For we cannot observe the position of an object in absolute space, as Newton himself admitted. All we can observe are the positions of objects relative to each other, and these would remain unchanged--for all objects are shifted by the same amount. N ~ Samir Okasha

Creativity involves provocation, exploration and risk taking. Creativity involves "thought experiments." You cannot tell in advance how the experiment is going to turn out. But you want to be able to carry out the experiment. ~ Edward De Bono

If you want to understand the nature of something, to find out the truth, that is one thing. If you want to play semantics, make up wild thought 'experiments', that is another thing. I am not so interested in the latter, though I do appreciate that it can be fun, however unproductive. ~ Patricia Churchland

One of the nice things about science fiction is that it lets us carry out thought experiments. ~ Rudy Rucker

These bizarre examples attempt to prove one conceptual point or another by deliberately reducing all but one underappreciated feature of some phenomenon to zero, so that what really counts can shine through. The twin earth example sets internal similarity to a maximum (you are whisked off to Twin Earth without being given a chance to register this huge shift) so that external context can be demonstrated to be responsible for whatever our intuition tells us. ~ Daniel C. Dennett

But one thing is the thought, another thing is the deed, and another thing is the idea of the deed. The wheel of causality doth not roll between them. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Jesus
if Kilgore Trout could only write! Rosewater exclaimed. He had a point: Kilgore Trout's unpopularity was deserved. His prose was frightful. Only his ideas were good. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" Now let's look at how Einstein articulated all of this in the famous paper that the Annalen der Physik received on June 30, 1905. For all its momentous import, it may be one of the most spunky and enjoyable papers in all of science. Most of its insights are conveyed in words and vivid thought experiments, rather than in complex equations. There is some math involved, but it is mainly what a good high school senior could comprehend. "The whole paper is a testament to the power of simple language to convey deep and powerfully disturbing ideas," says the science writer Dennis Overbye. ~ Walter Isaacson

Strap a piece of toast -buttered side up- to the back of a cat. Throw the cat out of the window.
Will the cat land on its feet or will Murphy's law apply? ~ Alan Fletcher

The life of Islamic philosophy did not terminate with Ibn Rushd nearly eight hundred years ago, as thought by Western scholarship for several centuries. Rather, its activities continued strongly during the later centuries, particularly in Persia and other eastern lands of Islam, and it was revived in Egypt during the last century. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr

There was something facile and shallow about male beauty, she thought. ~ William Boyd

She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those blue patches of sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought. ~ Kate Chopin

She wasn't sure if she even needed him anymore and the thought made her sad. In consolation, she offered him a kind smile and reached for his dependable hand. ~ Tan Redding

I've always thought abstractly - through theme and variations rather than narrative. ~ Robert Wilson

The cultural and political backgrounds of the two sides diverge in important aspects. The American approach to policy is pragmatic; China's is conceptual. America has never had a powerful threatening neighbor; China has never been without a powerful adversary on its borders. Americans hold that every problem has a solution; Chinese think that each solution is an admission ticket to a new set of problems. Americans seek an outcome responding to immediate circumstances; Chinese concentrate on evolutionary change. Americans outline an agenda of practical "deliverable" items; Chinese set out general principles and analyze where they will lead. Chinese thinking is shaped in part by Communism but embraces a traditionally Chinese way of thought to an increasing extent; neither is intuitively familiar to Americans. China ~ Henry Kissinger

He knew he could devastate her and drive her from him with a handful of well-chosen sentences. And part of him wanted to do just that. Part of him wanted to banish her and her presumptions from his life. He'd travel further and faster and lighter without her. Then an appalling thought battled through his anger. You sound just like Vanessa. ~ Val McDermid

We must go for a day in the country and when surrounded by the gay twittering of the birds and the smell of the cows I will lay my suit at her feet and he waved his arm wildly at the gay thought. ~ Daisy Ashford

We [Native Americans] respect being human beings, but also the natural and spiritual world and I thought that came across wonderfully and I hope a lot of people get a sense of that; not to take away that we also have that warrior spirit. ~ Adam Beach

You are where I unlock myself, where I say that I have often put down my wooden spoon to stare out the kitchen window to see the men I thought were magic for their story-telling or their way of walking, or the ones I was so strongly sexually attracted to, even though they weren't good people - at least not for me. ~ Elizabeth Berg

An intelligent investor gets satisfaction from the thought that his operations are exactly opposite to those of the crowd. ~ Benjamin Graham

His eyes fluttered shut, and he was quiet so long I thought he had fallen asleep, but then he said, in a voice so soft I could barely hear: "Love is not a disease. I'm not completely certain she was right, but I cannot let them cut you out of me, nor her either. I will cling to my sickness... if it is a sickness... I will hold it close to me like the... the sun... and the..."
He faded away again, this time for good.
The sky outside was blue, cold, and very far away; the sun to bright to look at, let alone hold close to me. "But I will try, uncle," I murmured, "though it burns me. I will keep it close. ~ Rachel Hartman

Men and women make their own beauty or their own ugliness. Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton speaks in one of his novels of a man "who was uglier than he had any business to be;" and, if we could but read it, every human being carries his life in his face, and is good-looking or the reverse as that life has been good or evil. On our features the fine chisels of thought and emotion are eternally at work. ~ Alexander Smith

What makes psychopathy so different, so surreal, so much like a relational b@$*tch-slap that it nearly knocks her head off?

--The sensation of being emotionally 'jumped' from behind.
--The inability to wrap her head around the emotional-physical-spiritual-sexual gang-bang that just happened when she thought she was with the most wonderful person.

No one can figure out how a dangerous psychopath curled up to them like a purring cat. Half of recovery is just trying to figure out 'what was THAT? ~ Sandra L. Brown

I never looked at my parents' marriage or really anyone who had been married more than 30 years and thought, 'I gotta get me some of that!' ~ Mike Birbiglia

He pulled the truck onto the shoulder of the road and parked, cell phone tight in one hand, his eyes on the landscape before him. From here he could see the foothills rippling out like a blanket from the ragged edge of the mountains. They spread in loose folds until becoming the flat expanse of prairie that crossed all the way to the Great Lakes. July's bounty was a brash flare of colour: wind combed through golden tracts of wheat and sun-bright canola so brilliant he had to squint.
The truck was balanced along the edge of an invisible wall which blocked Waterton from the rest of the world. He hadn't thought about how very real that barrier was; now that his phone was reconnected, it felt like a physical presence. He wasn't quite sure what he'd find on the other side. ~ Danika Stone

No matter how much I plan the overall arc of the character, you get there day one on the film and you shooting certain scenes first, and it goes completely different to anything you ever thought of, and then it's done. ~ Lin Shaye

The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind. ~ William Blake

I suspect I was not the first 21-year-old who thought he knew more than he did. And one of the virtues of age, one of the virtues of getting married and becoming a father, is it often leads one to take a more measured approach to life. ~ Ted Cruz

the world." Jeffrey just shakes his head. "You don't know what it was like. You weren't there when things got really bad. That Haslett asshole kept on calling, and then Iowa, and whenever I went out, there'd be someone just staring at me. It was like I could see my words there in their heads. Crawling there on the undersides of their foreheads. It was like they thought I knew something. And they always ask me, Is it true? Is it true? Did it really happen? And then . . . What's next? What are you working on now? All of these . . . these . . . these - "" (from "The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards: A Novel (Ala Notable Books for Adults)" by Kristopher Jansma) ~ Kristopher Jansma

My mom didn't run for mayor until she was 65 years old - it was like a second and third career ... The way I've always thought about it is that I don't believe you run for office because you want a job. I believe if you run for office, it's because you have a vision for change. And if I ever came to that point, that's what would lead [me to run]. And right now I'm happily in a position where I believe I can work to deliver impact and work for change. ~ Sylvia Mathews Burwell

Photons come out of nowhere, they cannot be stored, they can barely be pinned down in time, and they have no home in space whatsoever. That is, light occupies no volume and has no mass. The similarity between a thought and a photon is very deep. Both are born in a region beyond space and time where nature controls all processes in that void which is full of creative intelligence. ~ Deepak Chopra

I've often wondered," I said. "If you were an animal, what animal would you be?"
She leaned back, puzzled. "I can't say I've given it any thought," she said. "Since God did not make me an animal."
"Indulge me," I said. "For instance: fox or cat?"
...
Obviously I was both, since - unlike many - here I still am. I still have a bag of tricks. And I'm still high in the tree. ~ Margaret Atwood

What are you doing here?"
"Hiding! That's how you play the game, right? I thought the title hide-and-seek was fairly self-explanatory. Then again,you are blond."
"So are you,idiot. ~ Kiersten White

If God thought it necessary to offer rewards for love, your God must be immoral. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Somebody ripped their pants open at my wedding, dipping my mother. My mother is not a lady who throws herself into a dip that often, so I don't think he thought she was really going to do it. ~ Melissa McCarthy

There should be a phone service, I thought, something like 1-800-MEDIUM-1.Where an automated voice would direct you. Press one if an object in your home is levitating. Press two if there is ectoplasm oozing out of your walls. Press three if spirits are disrupting your cable service. Press four if you've inherited your mother's psychic abilities. ~ Elizabeth Cody Kimmel

I knew I was a good stage actor but I had no idea about movies. And I wasn't a Paul Newman type of guy. That's why I thought the stage is just right for me. ~ Ed O'Neill

Come for a walk, dear. The air will do you good."
Raoul thought that she would propose a stroll in the country, far from that building which he detested as a prison whose jailer he could feel walking within the walls... the jailer Erik... But she took him to the stage and made him sit on the wooden curb of a well, in the doubtful peace and coolness of a first scene set for the evening's performance.
On another day, she wandered with him, hand in hand, along the deserted paths of a garden whose creepers had been cut out by a decorator's skillful hands. It was as though the real sky, the real flowers, the real earth were forbidden her for all time and she condemned to breathe no other air than that of the theatre. An occasional fireman passed, watching over their melancholy idyll from afar. And she would drag him up above the clouds, in the magnificent disorder of the grid, where she loved to make him giddy by running in front of him along the frail bridges, among the thousands of ropes fastened to the pulleys, the windlasses, the rollers, in the midst of a regular forest of yards and masts. If he hesitated, she said, with an adorable pout of her lips:
"You, a sailor!"
And then they returned to terra firma, that is to say, to some passage that led them to the little girls' dancing-school, where brats between six and ten were practicing their steps, in the hope of becoming great dancers one day, "covered with diamonds..." Meanwhile, Christine gave them sweets ~ Gaston Leroux

Or again, take your red banner. You think it's a flag, isn't that what you think? Well, it isn't a flag. It's the purple kerchief of the death woman, she uses it for luring. And why for luring? She waves it and she nods and winks and lures young men to come and be killed, then she sends famine and plague. That's what it is. And you went and believed her. You thought it was a flag. You thought it was: Come to me, all ye poor and proletarians of the world. ~ Boris Pasternak

The less the thought of the body, the better. For it is the body that drags us down. ~ Swami Vivekananda

If you would have clear and irrefragable for a perpetual joy, a glory and a defense, the unwavering confidence, "I am Thy child," go to God's throne, and lie down at the foot of it, and let the first thought be, "My Father in heaven; " and that will brighten, that will establish, that will make omnipotent in your life, the witness of the Spirit that you are the child of God. ~ Alexander MacLaren

You didn't do anything to her, did you?"
"Nothing that would provoke her to flee." Except ruin her for any other man. And offer her a marriage of the sort she found appalling. And desire her with an intensity that made his throat close up at the thought of her gone. ~ Sabrina Jeffries

I would like to have nothing to do with you for hours on end and then come back and find you, come back with things I've thought and found all on my own - on my own, not through you. ~ Helen Oyeyemi

All That You Have Is Your Soul

Oh my mama told me
'Cause she say she learned the hard way
Say she wanna spare the children
She say don't give or sell your soul away
'Cause all that you have is your soul

Don't be tempted by the shiny apple
Don't you eat of a bitter fruit
Hunger only for a taste of justice
Hunger only for a world of truth
'Cause all that you have is your soul

I was a pretty young girl once
I had dreams I had high hopes
I married a man he stole my heart away
He gave his love but what a high price I paid
And all that you have is your soul

Why was I such a young fool
Thought I'd make history
Making babies was the best I could do
Thought I'd made something that could be mine forever
Found out the hard way one can't possess another
And all that you have is your soul

I thought thought that I could find a way
To beat the system
To make a deal and have no debts to pay
I'd take it all take it all I'd run away
Me for myself first class and first rate
But all that you have is your soul

Here I am waiting for a better day
A second chance
A little luck to come my way
A hope to dream a hope that I can sleep again
And wake in the world with a clear conscience and clean hands
'Cause all that you have is your soul

All that you have
All that you have
All that yo ~ Tracy Chapman

We do not think in words and phrases. We think only in pictures and/or images. Words are the raw materials of thought. ~ David J. Schwartz

I pulled the chair up to the bedside and studied his face. He was still pale, but he looked like Edward again. That cold bleakness was back in his eyes when no one but me was looking.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"It couldn't just be because you nearly died," I said.
"No," he said.
I smiled, but he didn't smile back.
"Bernardo came to see me, but Olaf never did," he said.
I realized then what he thought I'd waited around to tell him. "You think I killed Olaf, and I've been waiting for you to get healthy enough to give you the same choice you gave me after Harley died," I laughed. "Sweet Jesus, Edward."
"You didn't kill him." I watched him relax against his pillow, visibly relieved.
"No, I didn't kill him."
I took Olaf's letter out of my back pocket and handed it to him. He read it while I watched his face.
Nothing moved but his eyes. He had no reaction. "He's a good man at your back, Anita."
"You're not suggesting I date Olaf?"
He almost laughed. "No, fuck no. Stay as far away from him as you can. If he comes to St. Louis, kill him. Don't wait for him to deserve it. Just do it."
"I agree someone needs to kill Olaf, but why are you so adamant all of a sudden? You trusted him enough to bring him here to your town."
"Olaf has never had a girlfriend. He's had whores and he's had victims. Maybe it's true love, but I think if he shows up and finds that you won't be his little serial killer pin-up girl, that he'll tu ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

When your thought is right, your imaginations will be colourful; you will then dream and not have nightmares! ~ Jaachynma N.E. Agu

People who grow older think they are so wise, she thought. Like time means anything at all. ~ Joseph Fink

You see how people get through their misfortunes, if they have but a heart to bear up against them, and do nothing that can lie on their conscience afterwards; and how suddenly one comes to be happy, just when one is beginning to think one never is to be happy again! ... who would have thought we should ever know what it is to be happy! Yet here we are all abroad once more! All at liberty! And may run, if we will, straight forward, from one end of the earth to the other, and back again without being stopped! May fly in the sea, or swim in the sky, or tumble over head and heels into the moon! For remember, my good friends, we have no lead in our consciences to keep us down! ~ Ann Radcliffe

Believe in Your Ability to Cope with Negative Feedback

Just like everyone has a vision blind spot, everyone has cognitive blond spots that can lead to making less than stellar choices. For example, you think an outfit looks good on you, and in reality it doesn't. Or you thought you understood what your boss wanted but later realize you took the instructions in an unintended direction. Since we all have blind spots, making some mistakes and getting some negative feedback is unavoidable. Therefore, unless you plan to go live in a cave, you're going to need a game plan for how you'll cognitively and emotionally cope when negative feedback happens. We'll cover behavioral strategies later in the chapter, but let's work on the thinking and emotional aspects for now.
Experiment: Think about a specific scenario in which you fear negative feedback. If your fears came true:

--How would you go about making the required changes?
--How could you be self-accepting of your sensitivity to criticism? How could you talk to yourself gently about the emotions you're feeling instead of criticizing yourself for feeling upset? How could you be patient with yourself while you're having those feelings?
--What self-care would you do while you wait for your heart and upset feelings to pass? (Yes, rewatching episodes of '90s TV is a totally acceptable answer.)
--What personal support would you access to cope with your emotions? For example, you'd talk to a frie ~ Alice Boyes

If you want to know the real reasons behind that attitude, think of the thought behind that attitude ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

When I write, I hold nothing back. I write like he'll never read it. Because he never will. Every secret thought, every careful observation, everything I've saved up inside me, I put it all in the letter. When I'm done, I seal it, I address it, and then I put it in my teal hatbox. ~ Jenny Han

Howl said, "I think we ought to live happily ever after," and she thought he meant it. Sophie knew that living happily ever after with Howl would make a good deal more eventful than any story made it sound, though she was determined to try. "It should be hair-raising," added Howl. "And you'll exploit me," Sophie said. "And then you'll cut up all my suits to teach me," added Howl. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Would you kick an opponent when he was down? Yes, if I thought he might get up. ~ Edmund Rouse

I never felt like that before. Maybe it could be depression, like you get. I can understand how you suffer now when you're depressed; I always thought you liked it and I thought you could have snapped yourself out any time, if not alone then by means of the mood organ. But when you get that depressed you don't care. Apathy, because you've lost a sense of worth. It doesn't matter whether you feel better because you have no worth. ~ Philip K. Dick