Caleb Carr Quotes

In exploring new and doubtful tracts of speculation, the mind strikes out true and original views; as a drop of water hesitates at first what direction it will take, but afterwards follows its own course.

Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the Romance of the unusual.

There is at this present juncture, a certain fermentation of mind, a certain activity of speculation and enterprise which if properly directed may be made subservient to useful purposes; but which if left entirely to itself, may be attended with pernicious effects.

To use your head, you have to go out of your mind.

I just try to go outside the box. In fact, I go outside the box so much I go... 'What box!'

Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind.

Take a brilliant, creative social scientist, without any respect for conventional wisdom and you get Ellen Langer. She is a fantastic storyteller, and Counterclockwise is a fascinating story about the unexpected ways in which our minds and bodies are connected.

The best way to get people to think outside the box is not to create the box in the first place.

I want to inspire people to really open up their minds and not be one-sided or biased or hypocritical.

The first-rate mind is always curious, compassionate, original, and pessimistic.

Our minds can come up with the most entertaining possibilities, if we let them. But most of the time, we keep them under far too close a check.

Mathematics may, like poetry or music, "promote and sustain a lofty habit of mind."

And it’s only by going nowhere - by sitting still or letting my mind relax - that I find that the thoughts that come to me unbidden are far fresher and more imaginative than the ones I consciously seek out.

Wit and puns aren't just décor in the mind; they're essential signs that the mind knows it's on, recognizes its own software, can spot the bugs in its own program.

I'm always working on something. I wish I had more time for free-thinking and brainstorming new ideas. That's not to say my mind doesn't wander, but I find myself wishing for more of that kind of time.

Whether you are in the West, the East, the North, or the South, we should all feel pressured to attempt more, find new ways of outwitting ourselves, in our writing and thinking.

One must be truthful and honest in his approach; a constant independent inquiry and not blindly following a certain blue print laid down by others

Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical.

The entire world was like a palace with countless rooms whose doors opened into one another. We were able to pass from one room to the next only by exercising our memories and imaginations, but most of us, in our laziness, rarely exercised these capacities, and forever remained in the same room.

My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives.

Certainty is a closing of the mind. To create something new you must have doubt.

A cup is useful only when it is empty; and a mind that is filled with beliefs, with dogmas, with assertions, with quotations is really an uncreative mind.

Original thinking migrates each day in search of nourishment.

Creativity...involves the power to originate, to break away from the existing ways of looking at things, to move freely in the realm of the imagination, to create and recreate worlds fully in one's mind-while supervising all this with a critical inner eye.

The mind becomes withered, stagnant, narrow and closed unless it searches for new ideas.