The ancestor of every action is a thought.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Spiritual Laws"
 

IDEALS OF THE MIND
a Wisdom of Thought

Our third conversation is with Thought. We believe in the ideal of the "American Scholar," in whom a knowledge of books is balanced by experience of nature and practical activity in the world. Innermost House provides a way of life where these three come together in one unity of conversation, from which all alike may take away what is useful to them in the pursuit of their own work. We believe in the ideals of the mind, the whole mind, the mind made whole with the entirety of life. We seek the living forms of a higher learning in the deepest foundations of experience.
 

Read not the Times. Read the Eternities. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven.
Henry David Thoreau, Life Without Principle

But we must not follow those who advise us, being men, to think of human things, and, being mortal, of mortal things, but must, so far as we can, make ourselves immortal, and strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us; for even if it be small in bulk, much more does it in power and worth surpass everything.
                              Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

We are dedicated to thinking ideas back to their origins in the elemental forms of thought, so to conceive a truly original and universal culture. We invite all thinkers to join with us in a worldwide circle of shared conversation, seeking the meaning of our self-evident truths in the abiding ideals of the mind. 

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What is the remedy? They did not yet see, and thousands of young men as hopeful now crowding to the barriers for the career do not yet see, that if the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him. Patience,—patience; with the shades of all the good and great for company; and for solace the perspective of your own infinite life; and for work the study and the communication of principles, the making those instincts prevalent, the conversion of the world. . . . A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The American Scholar"