Lin Yutang Thinking Quotations

Neckties strangle clear thinking.

True peace of mind comes from accepting the worst. Psychologically, I think it means a release of energy.

I do not think that any civilization can be called complete until it has progressed from sophistication to unsophistication, and made a conscious return to simplicity of thinking and living.

In fact,I believe the reason why the Chinese failed to develop botany and zoology is that the Chinese scholar cannot stare coldly and unemotionally at a fish without immediately thinking of how it tastes in the mouth and wanting to eat it. The reason I don't trust Chinese surgeons is that I am afraid that when a Chinese surgeon cuts up my liver in search of a gall-stone, he may forget about the stone and put my liver in a frying pan.

Everything that we think God has in his mind necessarily proceeds from our own mind; it is what we imagine to be in God's mind, and it is really difficult for human intelligence to guess at a divine intelligence. What we usually end up with by this sort of reasoning is to make God the color-sergeant of our army and to make Him as chauvinistic as ourselves.

I have a hankering to go back to the Orient and discard my necktie. Neckties strangle clear thinking.

Art is both creation and recreation. Of the two ideas, I think art as recreation or as sheer play of the human spirit is more important.