The easiest and smallest manifestation of human freedom consists in choosing from several indifferent actions: to go right or left, or to stay in place. A higher and more difficult manifestation is choosing between yielding to an impulse and restraining from it. The most important and necessary manifestation of freedom is to direct your thoughts.
Work on purifying your thoughts. Without bad thoughts there will be no bad deeds.
— Confucius
Try not to think about the things you consider bad.
— Epictetus
Everything is in the power of Heaven, except for our desire to serve God or ourselves.
We cannot prevent birds from flying over our heads, but we have the power to prevent them from nesting on them. Likewise, we cannot stop bad thoughts from flying through our minds, but we have the power to stop them from nesting there and hatching evil deeds.
— Luther
There is hardly anything more necessary for knowledge, for peaceful life and for success in every kind of enterprise than for a human being to be able to control his thoughts.
— Locke
Thoughts are like guests; we are not responsible for their first visit. But whether they will continue to visit us again and often depends on how we receive them. You will do tomorrow that which you are thinking about today.
“He has hurt me, he has triumphed over me, he has subjugated me, he has insulted me”—hatred will never fade in a heart filled with such thoughts.
“He has hurt me, he has triumphed over me, he has subjugated me”—the one who does not harbor such thoughts will forever extinguish hatred in himself.
For hatred does not defeat that which comes from hatred: it is destroyed by love—such is the eternal law.
— The Dhammapada
When a view on things is determined, knowledge is gained; when knowledge is gained, the will begins to strive towards the truth; when the striving of the will is satisfied, the heart becomes good.
— Confucius
Watch your thoughts, watch your words, guard your actions from everything bad. Observe the purity of these three ways and you will step onto the path of truth.
— The Dhammapada
It is a sin not only to do but to think ill.
— Zarathustra
Feelings arise independently from human will; but the human being has the power to approve or disapprove of a feeling with his thought, and consequently to encourage or to arrest it.
