“If everyone is thinking alike, then someone isn’t thinking.”

George S. Patton, General U. S. Army

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."

Mark Twain

"The ancestor of every action is thought."

Emerson

"All that we are is the result of what we have thought."

Buddha

"When you are not told what to do you begin to think what to do."

Roger Cohen, Op-Ed Columnist New York Times

"No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking."

Voltaire

"Never be afraid to sit awhile and think."

Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun

"You and I are not what we eat; we are what we think."

Walter Anderson, The Confidence Course

"Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again?"

Winnie the Pooh

"Time to think matters ─ at least if we’re interested in getting the answers right."

Stephen L. Carter

"Thinking is always out of order, interrupts all ordinary activities and is interrupted by them."

Hannah Arendt, Life of the Mind

"Too often we…enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."

John F. Kennedy

"The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds."

Will Durant

"Thinking is like living and dying. Each of us must do it for himself."

Josiah Royce

"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar territory."

G. Behn

"The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking."

Albert Einstein

"Pursuing our thoughts in silent contemplation takes an investment in time that few can spare."

Stephen L. Carter

"A moment’s thinking is an hour in words."

Thomas Hood

"Sometimes I think and other times I am."

Paul, Variete: Cantiques spirituels 192

"To think is to differ."

Darrow

"To think is to live."

Cicero

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."

William Jones

"What we think, we become."

Buddha

"Our job is not to make up anybody’s mind, but to open minds and to make the agony of the decision-making so intense you can escape only by thinking."

Anonymous

"The person who thinks before he speaks is silent most of the time."

Anonymous

"Think ─ and you will be very lonely."

Anonymous

"Thought is action in rehearsal."

Anonymous

"We live in a world that leaves very little time to contemplate."

Anonymous

"Don’t worry too much about what people think because they seldom do."

Anonymous

"Invest a few moments in thinking. It will pay good interest."

Anonymous

"One cannot think crooked and walk straight."

Anonymous

"Think Differently + Do Things Differently = Better Results"

Anonymous

July 10, 2013

The Real World Awaits

Tags: Digital Communications,

U. S. News & World Report ranked Princeton University Number One in its 2013 edition of Best Colleges. It has 5,249 students and you can bet every one of them is smart. I mean really smart. Representing the Class of 2013 were seniors Aman Sinha (3.98 GPA), valedictorian, and Amelia Bensch-Schaus (3.9+ GPA), salutatorian.  Truly the smartest of the smart. And that’s saying something.

Sinha majored in mechanical and aerospace engineering, and Bensch-Schaus was a classics major. She definitely drew the short straw because she had to write and deliver her graduation speech in Latin, bowing to a centuries-old Princeton tradition (presumably when Latin was spoken at home).

But here’s why I bring all this up. Neither Sinha nor Bensch-Schaus are on Facebook or Twitter. According to Bensch-Schaus, “It never seemed like meaningful communication to me.”

Yikes. Two of the smartest people in the universe are turning a blind eye to the world of social media. So how does it make the rest of us look? And will they have a change of heart when they move from personal studies to participating in the real (business) world?

Some “real world” facts to consider: 

Facebook** currently has 1.11 billion users with 150 billion friend connections.

665 million users are active on a daily basis.

Every day there are 4.5 billion Facebook likes and 350 million photo uploads.

The average time spent per Facebook visit is 20 minutes.

Sinha was ironically using that 20 minutes (and more) every day to work on his senior thesis focusing on the way large groups reach a consensus.

And how about this...

There are currently 554,750,000 active registered Twitter users.*

Tomorrow there will be 135,000 more…and the day after that…and the day after that.

There are 9,100 tweets every second.

58 million tweets per day.

1 billion tweets every 5 days. (And you thought your email box was full).

Bensch-Schaus named her kitten after the ancient Trojan prince Hector from the Iliad. She neglected to tweet about it and no one was the wiser.

I wonder what they think of blogging?

*Source: Twitter, Huffington Post, eMarketer

**Source: Craig Smith/DMR Digital Marketing Ramblings

Since establishing Alvaré in 1981, Anita has guided the agency through 38 years of steady growth and success. A marketing communications entrepreneur who has done it all, she remains deeply involved in strategic planning and creative direction, bringing extensive knowledge and insight to each client project.

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