Thinking is an action,

Defining “thinking” in its broadest sense to include any kind of focus and imagery held in the mind, in addition to the cognitive process of logic and rational judgment, means that your feelings will typically be more driven by the thoughts you hold than the other way around.

Life becomes the way it is lived; and man may live the way he wants to live when he learns to think what he wants to think.

People think they think, but it’s not true. It’s mostly self-criticism that passes for thinking. True thinking is rare — just like true listening. Thinking is listening to yourself. It’s difficult. To think, you have to be at least two people at the same time. Then you have to let those people disagree. Thinking is an internal dialogue between two or more different views of the world.

We cannot think any true thought unless we want the true. Thinking is itself an aspect of practice.

Thought is not essential to existence nor its cause, but it is an instrument for becoming; I become what I see in myself. All that thought suggests to me, I can do; all that thought reveals in me, I can become. This should be man's unshakable faith in himself, because God dwells in him.

The human mind may perceive truth only through thinking, as is clear from Augustine.

All your actions, whether thinking of God or beating a child, spring from the same source — thinking. The thoughts themselves cannot do any harm. It is when you attempt to use, censor, and control those thoughts to get something that your problems begin. You have no recourse but to use thought to get what you want in this world. But when you seek to get what does not exist — God, bliss, love, etc. — through thought, you only succeed in pitting one thought against another, creating misery for yourself and the world.

Thinking is conversation with oneself.

It is precisely faith that makes thinking possible, for faith offers the unthought ground out of which thinking can emerge. It is faith that makes moral and other decisions possible, opening to us the horizon against which our actions become meaningful.

But thinking is something different, altogether! Think always as if the hot hand of hell were grabbing for you. Think to the limit of your mind. Imagine, dream, hope, want things, drive yourself to goodness. Whatever you do...do it to the absolute best of your ability. Never take the easy way where thinking is concerned.

To think is to run after insecurity, to be demoralized for grandiose trifles, to immure oneself in abstractions with a martyr's avidity, to hunt up complications the way others pursue collapse or gain. The thinker is by definition keen for torment.

You can’t experience anything except through thought. You can’t experience your own body except through the help of thought. The sensory perceptions are there. Your thoughts give form and definition to the body, otherwise you have no way of experiencing it. The body does not exist except as a thought. There is one thought. Everything exists in relationship to that one thought. That thought is “me.” Anything you experience based on thought is an illusion.

I'm discussing how thought would properly work — and does in fact work in many areas — first, to show that thought is not all bad; and second, because to understand what has gone wrong we should have some understanding of how it would work when it is right. Q: Is this the difference between thinking and thought as you described earlier? Bohm: Thought just works automatically. But when you're thinking, you are ready to see when it doesn't work and you're ready to start changing it. 'Thinking' means that when the thing isn't working, something more is coming in — which is ready to look at the situation and change the thought if necessary. Q: Is thinking an element that's outside of thought? Bohm: It's a bit beyond thought. Let's put it that thinking is not purely the past; it's not purely a set of reflexes in the past. Q: Would thinking be more 'of the moment', more energized, and thought more passive in the past? Bohm: The past is active. That's the trouble. The past is not really the past — it's the effect of the past in the present. The past has left a trace in the present. Q: Then the thinking would be even more energized? Bohm: Yes. The thinking will be more energized because thinking is more directly in the present, because it includes the incoherence that thought is actually making. It may also include allowing new reflexes to form, new arrangements, new ideas. If the reflexes are all somewhat open and flexible and changeable, then it will work nicely.