Chapter 5: The Art of Thinking
And every serious thinker, especially if he hopes to be a professional writer, should keep a notebook or a journal. I pointed out, in the first edition of this book, that good ideas are often elusive and must be captured in flight — in other words, that it is excellent practice always to have a pencil and pad handy, so as to jot down a good thought the moment after it lights up your mind. The complacent assumption that once a bright idea or happy phrase occurs to you it is a permanent acquisition, to be called upon only when needed, too often proves false. Even Nietzsche, one of the great seminal minds of the nineteenth century, found that: “A thought comes when it wishes, not when I wish.”
‘ When we write out our ideas, we are at the same time testing, developing, arranging, crystallizing, and completing them. We imagine ourselves not only making these ideas clear to others, but making them seem as important to others as they do to ourselves. So we try to make what was vague in our minds precise and definite; what was implicit, explicit; what was discon-nected, unified; what was fragmentary, whole. We frame a generalization, then try to make it as plausible as we can; we try to think of concrete illus-trations of it. And as we do this, we also expose it to ourselves — and some-times, alas, find that it is empty, untenable, or sheer nonsense.
Henry Hazlitt, The Wisdom of Henry Hazlitt [1993]
[x]#176 fan zondag 7 april 2002 @ 15:14:47
