We are all born with a blank mind and from then on we keep absorbing various thoughts picked from our parents, our teachers, books, friends, colleagues etc. Our ability to absorb them will obviously depend on factors like our intelligence, our sensibility, background etc. Based on that input we will keep developing a personality, and then at some point of time we tend to close the gates of our mind for new thoughts which is when we start having convictions and belief systems and from then on we start having a conflict with anyone who opposes.
 
I personally am a guy who has no belief systems and hence have no conflict with anything or anyone and the reason for that is that I never close the gate of my mind to thoughts from anywhere, which in turn would influence and change my existing thoughts in a continuous manner.
 
So here in this new section “Thoughts that grew me” that I am starting on my blog, I want to share with you thoughts I have heard, read or being quoted from books, movies, conversations etc. I am going to quote the thought and where I heard or read it from, but not necessarily where it originated from, as there is no way of me knowing that for sure.
 
The thoughts here could be quotes, anecdotes, excerpts and even passages from books. They could be funny, profound, entertaining, dramatic, thought provoking and thought changing. The only common thing in them would be that they would add some element to one’s understanding and thought process. Some of them might have a note from me as an explanation or to help in putting that thought in a particular context.
 
Once you go through the below example of thoughts, those of you interested can send me your own thoughts or what you heard and of those who appeal to me, I will put in here in this section.
 
Thoughts:
1. There always will be a confused soul in an existing system who will think that he can change the system. The only way to convince him otherwise is to kill him. – Ned Beatty’s character in the film “The Shooter”.
 
2. You close your eyes and go to sleep and the world ceases to exist. – Philosopher Schopenhauer in his book “The World as Will and Idea”.
 
3. A lion wakes up everyday and starts running after a deer to survive. A deer wakes up everyday and starts running from a lion to survive. So the point is that it does not matter whether you are a lion or a deer. You just have to keep running. – An SMS from an unknown number.
 
4. It’s a good thing that the world turned out to be round as it would have been pretty difficult to put a satellite in a square orbit. – Mad magazine.
 
5. The best things in life are for free and pleasurable. It is only the dinners, the gifts and the conversations which one has to go through in order to lead to the best things which are both painful and expensive. – RGV
 
6.  Of many a proud structure’s ruin, raindrops and weeds have been the cause. – Friedrich Nietzsche – “Thus Spake Zarathustra”.
 
7. The first thing to do to make your dreams come true is to wake-up. – Line on a greeting card.
 
8. When Napoleon, who was supposedly short, was trying to reach for a book on a high shelf, one of his generals offered, “Let me get that for you, my Lord. I am higher than you,” to which apparently Napoleon replied, “You are not higher. You are longer.”
 
9. An agitated executive at a board of director’s meeting of the Liril soap company was overheard saying…… “It’s fantastic that we made the model so popular! But what about the fucking soap?”
 
10. Silence is not always golden. Many times it is just plain yellow. – Mad magazine.
 
11. The following excerpt is from the opening page of a Desmond Bagley book. I am quoting it here as an example of sheer narrative genius…………..
“I was standing at the edge of the cliff road with a body at my feet. You didn’t need to study medicine to know how the man died. He died of cardiac arrest. The arrest was caused due to a thin blade of steel passing through his heart. I wasn’t too anxious to call a doctor as at the time the blade pricked out his life its handle happened to be in my hands.”
 
12. The point of life is that there is no point to it. So the best point we can aim at is to live it point by point and point to point. – RGV.