If you don’t argue with me, I don’t know what I think.
— Alan Watts ‘On the Nature of Consciousness’
We speak, not only to tell others what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think.
— J. Hughlings Jackson (Dennett 1991, 194)
“How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?”
— the old lady in the anecdote related by E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel, Chapter 5
… the thinking subject himself is in a kind of ignorance of his thoughts so long as he has not formulated them for himself, or even spoken and written them, as is shown by the example of so many writers who begin a book without knowing exactly what they are going to put into it.
— Merleau-Ponty (1945, 206)
So see we so as seed we sow.
— Finnegans Wake (250)