Hypersanity: Thinking Beyond Thinking

Neel Burton

Top 10 Best Quotes

“Søren Kierkegaard: Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion—and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion… while truth again reverts to a new minority.”

“Teaching is very much like pruning: you need to know when and where and how to make the cuts, and, of course, why.”

“Many people are unable to let their minds wander off the beaten path for fear of the monsters that may be lurking in the undergrowth. If you meet a monster, take the chance to say ‘hello’.”

“To show someone something that you know is an act of love that is not practised nearly enough.”

“There seems to be an important relationship between language and thought: I often speak—or write, as I am doing right now—to define or refine my thinking on a particular topic, and language is the scaffolding by which I arrive at my more subtle or syncretic thoughts.”

“The principal benefit of studying philosophy is that is makes everything else seem easy, or shallow, or nonsensical.”

“Much of the particularity of a language is extra-lexical, built into the syntax and grammar of the language and virtually invisible to native speakers. English, for example, restricts the use of the present perfect tense (‘has been’, ‘has read’) to subjects who are still alive, marking a sharp grammatical divide between the living and the dead, and, by extension, between life and death. But of course, as an English speaker, you already knew that, at least subconsciously. Language is full of built-in assumptions and prejudices.”

“Knowledge we find in articles, books, and courses, but wisdom we find only in our own hearts.”

“It's interesting how having things to do is largely a matter of whether you think you have things to do.”

“If we are to live, we must first learn to die.”

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Book Keywords:

writing, mindfulness, busyness, grammar, analogy, perspective, philosophy, ego, higher-education, pedagogy, stress, cognition, thinking, death, language, teaching, education, wisdom, epistemology, thought