A Commonplace Book

...there is nothing either good or
bad, but thinking makes it so.

All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage.... If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.

We are what we think.

If you think you are free, You are free.
If you think you are bound, You are bound.
For the saying is true: You are what you think.

Everyone makes for himself his own segment of world and constructs his own private system, often with air-tight compartments, so that after a time it seems to him that he has grasped the meaning and structure of the whole. But the finite will never be able to grasp the infinite.

"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."

When we confront fundamental questions about the nature of reality, things quickly get weird.... I submit that weirdness is inevitable, and that something radically bizarre will turn out to be true.... [A]ll broad-ranging attempts to articulate the fundamental structure of reality, no matter how soberly we approach them, inevitably become both bizarre and dubious. Bizarre, in that they defy common sense. And dubious, in that they allow for reasonable doubt.

...The key is to become comfortable weighing competing implausibilities, something that we can all try--so long as we don't expect to all arrive at the same conclusions.

Will we never know the right interpretation of quantum mechanics, or the grounds of consciousness, or whether we live in a simulation? Not necessarily. Science can reveal answers to questions that previously seemed unsolvable. What once appeared bizarre can become comfortable and familiar.