Automatic Thoughts Quotes & Sayings

But like they say, if an idea's stupid, but it works, then it ain't stupid, — Larry Correia

Blessed be all metrical rules that forbid automatic responses, force us to have second thoughts, free us from the fetters of Self. — W. H. Auden

Unfortunately, as a society, we do not teach our children that they need to tend carefully the garden of their minds. Without structure, censorship, or discipline, our thoughts run rampant on automatic. Because we have not learned how to more carefully manage what goes on inside our brains, we remain vulnerable to not only what other people think about us, but also to advertising and/or political manipulation. — Jill Bolte Taylor

The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress. — Charles Kettering

The faculty of using my resources well diminishes when their number grows. — Robert Bresson

Transition and change - guaranteed to cause anxiety. That anxiety shows itself in physical and behavioral ways, but also with thoughts (sometimes really crazy ones). This is the (primitive/automatic) brain's way of keeping us safe from the danger of change. We end up getting so involved with the feeling and thoughts of anxiety, we get distracted from the "danger". If we trust the anxiety then our primitive brain has succeeded in "protecting" us from the danger. I suggest not believing, trusting, or taking direction from the anxiety and continue your pursuits forward. Then, you will be amazed at your ability to attract and reveal your true capabilities, your light, your magic. — Charles F. Glassman

But the biggest clue seemed to be their expressions. They were hard to explain. Good-natured, friendly, easygoing ... and uninvolved. They were like spectators. You had the feeling they had just wandered in there themselves and somebody had handed them a wrench. There was no identification with the job. No saying, "I am a mechanic." At 5 P.M. or whenever their eight hours were in, you knew they would cut it off and not have another thought about their work. They were already trying not to have any thoughts about their work on the job. — Robert M. Pirsig

The records that I grew up listening to had feel, and the drummers that inspired me - like Stewart Copeland, Neil Peart, Phil Collins and Roger Taylor - all had their own voice and individual style. — Taylor Hawkins

And then the work bears a strong sense of leave-taking for me personally. It ends the work I began in the 1960s (paintings from black-and-white photographs), with a compressed summation that precludes any possible continuation. And so it is a leave-taking from thoughts and feelings of my own on a very basic level. Not that this is a deliberate act, of course; it is a quasi-automatic sequence of disintegration and reformation which I can perceive, as always, only in retrospect. — Gerhard Richter

The physical sensation of gliding with the wind in your face is exhilarating. That automatic activity of pedalling, when you have to be awake but not think too much, allows you to let subconscious thoughts bubble up, and things seem to just sort themselves out. And the adrenaline wakes you up if you weren't properly alert. — David Byrne

Disease Carrying thoughts swarm and multiply in the dark and twisted labyrinths of our minds, and all that is needed is a mob and a good political slogan for the epidemic to be spread once again, with a burst of automatic weapons or a mushroom cloud. — Romain Gary

You say that this society will come to an end, because societies always have done so.
I wonder whether they have ended because they were not really societies at all. — Idries Shah

Gross man seldom or never realizes that his body is a kingdom, governed by Emperor Soul on the throne of the cranium, with subsidiary regents in the six spinal centres or spheres of consciousness. This theocracy extends over a throng of obedient subjects: twenty-seven thousand billion cells (endowed with sure if seemingly automatic intelligence by which they perform all duties of bodily growths, transformations, and dissolutions) and fifty million substratal thoughts, emotions, and variations of alternating phases in man's consciousness in an average life of sixty years. Any — Paramahansa Yogananda

Hats have power. Hats can change you into someone else. — Catherynne M Valente

The thoughts that creep into our brain about other people tell us less about those people than they do about ourself ... Understand that most judgments of others are an attempt to empower ourselves and give a sense of being better than the person we judge ... Our primitive nature (automatic brain) helps us believe that this is necessary for protection. Following this natural tendency puts up further obstructions to the law of attraction. — Charles F. Glassman

When you're anxious, don't immediately trust your automatic thoughts because oftentimes these thoughts are irrational. Thoughts are not facts. They're just thoughts and sometimes don't need to be given so much importance. — John Tsilimparis

It is proven that when women are educated, the ability of the country goes up immediately. — Angelique Kidjo

Third, you learn to make different explanations, called reattributions, and use them to dispute your automatic thoughts. — Martin E.P. Seligman

First, you learn to recognize the automatic thoughts flitting through your consciousness at the times you feel worst. — Martin E.P. Seligman

According to the Yogis, there are three principal nerve currents: one they call the Ida, the other the Pingala, and the middle one the Sushumna, and all these are inside the spinal column. The Ida and the Pingala, the left and the right, are clusters of nerves, while the middle one, the Sushumna, is hollow and is not a cluster of nerves. This Sushumna is closed, and for the ordinary man is of no use, for he works through the Ida and the Pingala only. Currents are continually going down and coming up through these nerves, carrying orders all over the body through other nerves running to the different organs of the body. The task before us is vast; and first and foremost, we must seek to control the vast mass of sunken thoughts which have become automatic with us. The evil deed is, no doubt, on the conscious plane; but the cause which produced the evil deed was far beyond in the realms of the unconscious, — Swami Vivekananda

I've gotta stop thinking I know what other people think, cause most of 'what other people think' is something I'm making up. So I should just let them have their experience, I'll have my experience and not pretend to know, and just get past that. [I think that] is a major obstacle: manifesting that insecurity, that fear. Believing the audience in your head as opposed to what's really going on in the world - not responding to the one I'm making up, which is always going to judge me harder than the real one. — Marc Maron

I'm not jealous," he said jealously. — T.J. Klune

Second, you learn to dispute the automatic thoughts by marshaling contrary evidence. — Martin E.P. Seligman