"Everything is interdependent; and yet the more interdependent we get, the more we seem to split up into little groups that don't like each other and are inclined to fight each other, or at least not to cooperate."
"I'm saying the reason we don't see the source of our problems is that the means by which we try to solve them are the source."
"Thought is creating divisions out of itself and then saying they are there naturally. The divisions between nations are regarded as being 'just there', but obviously they were invented by people."
"I'm saying that thought has the character that it is doing something and saying it isn't doing it."
"Another problem of fragmentation is that thought divides itself from feeling and from the body."
"This is another major feature of thought: thought doesn't know it is doing something and then it struggles against what it is doing."
"So we have this system of thought. Now, I say that this system has a fault in it - a systemic fault. It's not a fault here, there or there, but it is a fault that is throughout the system."
"We could say that for one thing that perhaps there is some kind of perception or intelligence which is deeper, which is able to see this incoherence. The system itself could not see it's incoherence very far, because it would distort it. But I'm suggesting that there is a capacity to see incoherence."
"If you engage in positive thinking to overcome negative thoughts, the negative thoughts are still there acting. That's still incoherence."
"We've said that when we have a thought, it registers in the memory. It registers in the form of a reflex."
"I say it's useful to look at this as a system of reflexes. A reflex just operates, as we've seen in the case of knee-jerk."
"The question is: can you become aware of the reflex character of thought - that it is a reflex, that it is a whole system of reflexes which is constantly capable of being modified, added to, changed? And we could say that as long as the reflexes are free to change then there must be some kind of intelligence or perception, something a bit beyond reflex, which would be able to see whether it's coherent or not. But when it gets conditioned too strongly it may resist that perception; it may not allow it."
"A species that is not coherent either with itself or with its environment doesn't survive."
"Whenever people are finding it hard to get along you will discover that they have different assumptions as to what is necessary or absolutely necessary. If you look at it you can see that that's what they're fighting about."
"The instinct of self-preservation is generally regarded as a very powerful set of reflexes built in by a set of genes, but the notion (thought) of absolute necessity will override that every time."
- David Bohm, Thought As a System
"Thought works by conditioning. It has to get conditioned. You need conditioning to learn a language, to learn how to write, or to do all sorts of things. When the conditioning gets too rigid, though, it won't change when it should." - David Bohm
