Thinking Quotes
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The difference between listening and pretending to listen, I discovered, is enormous. One is fluid, the other is rigid. One is alive, the other is stuffed. Eventually, I found a radical way of thinking about listening. Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you. When I’m willing to let them change me, something happens between us that’s more interesting than a pair of dueling monologues.
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There's nothing particularly wrong with being more pessimistic than optimistic. Optimism is broad-based, non-detail-oriented thinking; pessimism is detail-oriented thinking.
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Thinking has an understructure and underpinnings.
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I think my most important advice is to understand what are the foundations of a healthy democracy and how we have to engage in citizenship continuously, not just when something upsets us; not just when there's an election or when an issue pops up for a few weeks. It's hard work.
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I find inspiration by feeling like I haven't done or achieved anything. I push all songs I've written to the furthest part of my mind so I am not thinking of what I've done. I continue to think on what I need to do.
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I don't think I'm a singer, I think I'm an expressionist. But it takes time to put it in people's minds that this guy is not singing, 'Baby, I want to have you.' This guy is actually thinking about what he's saying. This guy has something to say.
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Any work of art makes one very simple demand on anyone who genuinely wants to get in touch with it. And that is to stop. You've got to stop what you're doing, what you're thinking, and what you're expecting and just be there for the poem for however long it takes.
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Again, one of the problems I have with television, as I mentioned before, is it's trivial in many ways, and I think that a lot of folks out there are looking for new metaphors and new ways of thinking about things.
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I feel like sometimes I'm so positive and sometimes I think the worst of everything or I think the worst is going to happen. It's how I deal with stuff day-to-day, it's just how I get by really, and it's probably not the best way to be.
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I think most of us are raised with preconceived notions of the choices we're supposed to make. We waste so much time making decisions based on someone else's idea of our happiness - what will make you a good citizen or a good wife or daughter or actress. Nobody says, 'Just be happy - go be a cobbler or go live with goats.'
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I'm not somebody that thinks about destiny and fate, but I don't walk away from it when something unfolds.
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I've met the Queen a couple of times, and she's been delightful. In fact, I often find myself thinking: 'What would the Queen do in this situation? Write a thank-you note? Yes, I'll do that.' She's all about courtesy.
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I think we have to be not so afraid of scarcity. We have to be willing to give away all things.
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I think my biggest revelation was to write entirely from the heart, and to convey emotion, even when it meant forcing myself to feel uncomfortable in doing so.
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I'm always making Butcher Holler sound like the most backward part of the United States-and I think maybe it is.
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Keep your opinions to yourself. I think it's important that I stay neutral on politics and remain hard to understand. I don't want to be pigeonholed as conservative, liberal, independent or anything. I back the man for the things the man believes in, not whether it says "R" or "D" down there beside his name.
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When Denzel [Washington] first called me on the phone after we'd just done a reading of the film ["Fences"]. He said, "Oh Viola it was so good, wasn't it?! I'm gonna tell Russell [Hornsby] to lose a little bit of weight and..." I was just sitting there thinking, why is he calling me? And I told him, "Denzel don't you tell me to lose weight!" He said, "I'm not telling you to lose weight! I can't believe you would say that."
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Anyone taking heroin is thinking about taking heroin more than they're thinking about anything else. That's the general rule about most drugs.
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I think, when we start dealing with heaven or hell issues, what we really need to gravitate toward is that man is an eternal spirit. And if you believe that he is an eternal spirit then all it does, it abandons the body.
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I don't believe in aliens. I don't think aliens or ghosts like black people. We never get abducted; our houses never get haunted. It always happens in rural areas, where no ethnic people live. The day I see somebody from South Central Los Angeles say, 'Man, I got abducted yesterday,' then I'll believe it.
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I think it's really different for me whether I'm touring as part of a larger group or if I'm touring on my own. It's a completely different experience, because when I tour on my own, it's really just me by myself, and I make nice relationships with people.
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The Law of Concentration states that whatever you dwell upon, grows. The more you think about something, the more it becomes part of your reality.
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I think it's important that you always transform if you can. That's what I was trained to do. You try and hide yourself as much as you can - that's the key to longevity.
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My aggression out there is my weapon. I think it's more letting them know that I'm not going to let them get away with something, and I'm not just going to kind of poke it back and be content to stay in rallies.
