Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
- Walter Lippmann

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you.
- Don Marquis

As I grow older , I regret to say that a detestable habit of thinking seems to be getting a hold of me.
- H. Rider Haggard


THE DENSA TEST

Where do you fit in the range between "Genius" and "Idiot"? Answer these 12 questions and find out: (write down your answers on a piece of paper)

1. Do they have a 4th of July in England? Yes No
2. How many birthdays does the average man have?
3. Some months have 31 days; how many have 28?
4. How many outs are there in an inning?
5. Is it legal for a man in California to marry his widow's sister? Yes No
6. Divide 30 by 1/2 and add 10. What is the answer?
7. If there are 3 apples and you take away 2, how many do you have?
8. A doctor gives you three pills telling you to take one every half hour. How many minutes would the pills last?
9. A farmer has 17 sheep, and all but 9 die. How many are left?
10. How many animals of each sex did Moses take on the ark?
11. A clerk in the butcher shop is 5' 10" tall. What does he weigh?
12. How many two cent stamps are there in a dozen?

Click HERE for answers and scoring system


When people think differently, they automatically act differently.

The mind is like a parachute. It only functions when it's open.

Obviously, a man's judgement cannot be better than the information on which he has based it. Give him the truth and he may still go wrong when he has the chance to be right, but give him no news or present him only with distorted and incomplete data, with ignorant, sloppy or biased reporting, with propaganda and deliberate falsehoods, and you destroy his whole reasoning processes, and make him something less than a man.
- Arthur Hays Sulzberger

If everyone thought the same way, no one would be thinking.
- John Diefenbaker

The essence of intellect is the ability to make distinctions.
- Jim Cathcart

Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures.
- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
- B.F. Skinner

Your thoughts become your words.
Your words become your actions.
Your actions become your legacy.

Be careful what you think!
- There are many versions of this attributed to many people. This is my version.

The mind is the measure of the man.
- John Merrick (The Elephant Man)

I keep six honest serving men
(They taught me all I knew)
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
- Rudyard Kipling

It’s OK to think about what you want to do
Until such time as you figure out what it is you were meant to do.
- Jim Morris’ grandfather

Brain teasers:
1. Add a line to make the following formula correct: 5 + 5 + 5 = 550
2. Fill in the last two missing letters of this sequence: O T T F F S S _ _
(Answers found at the end of this section)

It is easier to behave your way into a new way of thinking than it is to think your way into a new way of behaving.

When we stimulate our minds, we stimulate our souls.

You are not thinking, you are merely being logical.
- Neils Bohr to Einstein

The fact that logic cannot satisfy us awakens an almost insatiable hunger for the irrational.
- A. N. Wilson

I was a free thinker before I knew how to think.
- George Bernard Shaw

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.
- Confucius

An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
- Albert Einstein

Action is the sequel to thought, not its precursor.
- Susan Gerke

Common sense is not a simple thing. Instead it is an immense society of hard-earned practical ideas - of multitudes of life-learned rules and exceptions, dispositions and tendencies, balances and checks.
- Marvin Minsky

Thoughts are mostly echoes of your past perceptions.
- Karl Albrecht

MIND: A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavor to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with.
- Ambrose Bierce

I can tolerate a mind that's DUMB, but not one that's just plain NUMB.

COMPUTERS WORK, PEOPLE THINK.
- Old IBM Adage

There is no singularly real world of thought; each mind evolves its own internal universe.
- Marvin Minsky

No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched.
- George Hean Nathan

We are least aware of what out minds do best.
- Marvin Minsky

The brain is as strong as its weakest think.
- Eleanor Doan

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
- William James

The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory.
- Paul Fix

I'd rather know some of the questions than all of the answers.
- James Thurber

I roamed the countryside searching for the answers to things I did not understand. Why shells existed on the tops of mountains along with the imprints of coral and plant and seaweed usually found in the sea. Why the thunder lasts a longer time than that which causes it and why immediately on its creation the lightening becomes visible to the eye while thunder requires time to travel. How the various circles of water form around the spot which has been struck by a stone and why a bird sustains itself in the air. These questions and other strange phenomena engaged my thought throughout my life.
- Leonardo da Vinci, Renaissance Man

The seven multiple intelligences:
1. Verbal - the ability to use words
2. Visual - the ability to see things in your mind
3. Physical - the ability to use your body well
4. Musical - the ability to understand and use music
5. Mathematical & Logical - the ability to apply logic to systems and numbers
6. Introspective - the ability to understand thoughts and feelings in yourself
7. Interpersonal - the ability to relate well to others
- Jim Cathcart

Brain: An apparatus with which we think that we think.
- Ambrose Bierce

The real problem is that PERCEPTION is all there is. There is no reality as such. There is only perceived reality, the way each of us chooses to perceive a communication, the value of a service, the value of a particular product feature, the quality of a product. The REAL is what we PERCEIVE.
- Tom Peters & Nancy Austin

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
- Albert Einstein

The number of synapses in the brain increase sharply from birth to about 2 years of age. At 2 the child possesses two times the number of synapses of the average adult. This could be compared to the sculptor who starts off with a large block of clay (more than needed) and then gradually removes clay that is not needed. So the mind of the child is equipped at age two with a very large potential. Latent skills, abilities and talents are ready and waiting to be developed. If not used, they will atrophy with age and will be more difficult to learn and develop later. This emphasizes the need to surround the child with a rich learning environment at an early age.

Some of the most crucial steps in mental growth are based not simply on acquiring new skills, but on acquiring new administrative ways to use what one already knows.
- Seymour Papert

Never speak more clearly than you think.
- Jeremy Bernstein

To be considered an "EXPERT", one needs a large amount of knowledge of only a relatively few variety. In contrast, an ordinary person's "common sense" involves a much larger variety of different types of knowledge - and this requires more complicated management systems. It is easier to acquire specialized knowledge than common sense knowledge.
- Marvin Minsky

It has been the persuasion of an immense majority of human beings that sensibility and thought (as distinguished from matter) are, in their own nature, less susceptible of division and decay, and that, when the body is resolved into its elements, the principle which animated it will remain perpetual and unchanged. However, it is probable that what we call thought is not an actual being, but no more than the relation between certain parts of that infinitely varied mass, of which the rest of the universe is composed, and which ceases to exist as soon as those parts change their position with respect to each other.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley


The Densa Test - Your Evaluation

1. Is there a fourth of July in England? Yes, it comes after the third of July!
2. How many birthdays does the average man have? Just one!
3. Some months have 31 days; how many have 28? All of them!
4. How many outs are there in an inning? 6, three per side!
5. Is it legal for a man in California to marry his widow's sister? No - because he is dead!
6. Divide 30 by 1/2 and add 10. What is the answer? 70. 30 divided by 2 equals 15, 30 divided by 1/2 equals 60!
7. If there are 3 apples and you take away 2, how many do you have? 2, you took them, remember?
8. A doctor gives you three pills telling you to take one every half hour. How many minutes would the pills last? 60 minutes, start with the 1st pill, 30 minutes later take the 2nd, then 30 minutes for the 3rd.
9. A farmer has 17 sheep, and all but 9 die. How many are left? 9, if 8 out of 17 die, all but 9 die, eh?
10. How many animals of each sex did Moses take on the ark? None, Moses didn't have an ark, Noah did!
11. A clerk in the butcher shop is 5' 10" tall. What does he weigh? Meat, a butcher weighs meat!
12. How many two cent stamps are there in a dozen? 12, there are 12 2cent stamps in a dozen!

Add Up Your Score:
12 Genius
10-11 Above Normal
7-9 Normal
4-6 Slow
1-3 Idiot
0 Brain dead

Click HERE to return to Quiz


Answers to brain teasers:
1. Change the first (or second, but not both) "+" sign to a "4". (There is also another solution - can you figure it out???)
2. This sequence of letters represents the first letters of "One, Two, Three, etc." So the last two would be E and N for Eight and Nine.


End of Quotes on "Think/ing"

12/10/2008

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