Date: 1971, 1979

"Thinking is trying to better one's instructions; it is trying out promissory tracks which will exist, if they ever do exist, only after one has stumbled exploringly over ground where they are not."

— Ryle, Gilbert (1900-1976)

Date: 1984

"At any given time, I'm aware that my mind and imagination are setting towards a particular compass point, that the whole edifice is preparing itself to lean in one way, like a great ramshackle barn."

— Ballard, J. G. (1930-2009)

Date: 1984

"Yes, if I'm not working, I talk over ideas to myself on the machine, by which I mean I type out little ideas, let my mind wander."

— Ballard, J. G. (1930-2009)

Date: November 22, 1990

"One is not an immaterial soul, floating around in a machine."

— Sacks, Oliver (b. 1933)

Date: 1996

"One would expect, then, that such a political period would be rife with various veins of pseudo-mysticism, enamoured of whatever gives the slip to the concept, enthralled by those spasms of mind which confound its customary distinctions, which breed in us some ecstatic state of indeterminacy in ...

— Eagleton, Terry (b. 1943)

Date: February 8, 1996

"Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications."

— Barlow, John Perry (b. 1947)

Date: 2000

"The public situations that I have mentioned give rise to corresponding mental processes which are modeled on the public procedures, as a shadowy movement on a ceiling is modeled on an original physical movement on the floor."

— Hampshire, Stuart (1914-2004)

Date: 2008

"There is tremendous precision and gentleness in the practice: the precision of noticing what is happending, the waterfall of thought; the gentleness of being nonjudgmental, not rejecting the busy mind. Over time, acknowledging that we are thinking and coming back to breath, the waterfall gradual...

— Barker, Phil

Date: 2008

"When people begin to practise mindfulness they are usually surprised to discover how busy the mind is: like a waterfall, one thought tumbling after the next."

— Barker, Phil

Date: May 21, 2011

"My thoughts turn into the cowbirds wandering among the horses’ hooves."

— Klinkenbourg, Verlyn (b. 1952)