quotations about the mind
He is the happiest man who is engaged in a business which tasks the most faculties of his mind.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The mind is a challenge because it works more like a city than a household, with several networked links resonating at different times and with different subgroups of nodes, such that understanding the behavior of individuals or even of smaller groups won't tell the whole story of what's going on. No approach can capture the whole of what goes on over time in a large city like New York or Rio, even if a city is made of small neighborhoods -- and those neighborhoods, of a few individuals. One may capture certain mass events, like rush hour traffic or festivals, parades or open-air concerts, but not the global behavior of the city.
MARCELO GLEISER
"Science And The Mystery Of The Mind", NPR, November 29, 2017
The heavens and the earth may be captured by the mind's eye.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
The Gospel of Buddha
Here in your mind you have complete privacy. Here there's no difference between what is and what could be.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Choke
A brilliant mind was never as clever as three average minds sniffing after something of interest.
ROBERT REED
"Precious Mental", Asimov's Science Fiction, June 1, 2013
Some minds are so unclothed that they are indecent.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
It is in our own mind and not in exterior objects that we perceive most things; fools know scarcely anything because they are empty, and their heart is narrow; but great souls find in themselves a number of exterior things; they have no need to read or to travel or to listen or to work to discover the highest truths; they have only to delve into themselves and search, if we may say so, their own thoughts.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES
Reflections and Maxims
Failing to understand the workings of one's own mind is bound to lead to unhappiness.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
Empires will fall--dynasties fade away; but the mind of man will survive the destruction of all inanimate matter--its destiny is eternal.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
You can, when you choose, sharpen the pencil of your mind to a very fine point. Specialize, my boy, specialize.
SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS
Average Jones
A Man has always the voice of his mind.
PIERRE-ANTOINE BERRYER
attributed, Words of Human Wisdom
What shall I compare it to, this fantastic thing I call my Mind? To a waste-paper basket, to a sieve choked with sediment, or to a barrel full of floating froth and refuse? No, what it is really most like is a spider's web, insecurely hung on leaves and twigs, quivering in every wind, and sprinkled with dewdrops and dead flies. And at its centre, pondering forever the Problem of Existence, sits motionless the spider-like and uncanny Soul.
LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH
Trivia
All civilization in a sense exists only in the mind. Gunpowder, textile arts, machinery, laws, telephones are not themselves transmitted from man to man or from generation to generation, at least not permanently. It is the perception, the knowledge and understanding of them, their ideas in the Platonic sense, that are passed along. Everything social can have existence only through mentality.
ALFRED L. KROEBER
The Superorganic
His mind was like the sea itself: troubled, and too deep for the bravest man's descent, throwing up now and again, for the naked eye to wonder at, treasure and debris long forgotten on the bottom--bones and jewels, fantastic shells, jelly that had once been flesh, pearls that had once been eyes. And he was at the mercy of this sea, hanging there with darkness all around him.
JAMES BALDWIN
Go Tell It on the Mountain
First, then, I say, that the mind, which we often call the intellect, in which is placed the conduct and government of life, is not less an integral part of man himself, than the hand, and foot, and eyes, are portions of the whole animal.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
Yoga is the cessation of mind.
PATANJALI
The Yoga Sutras
When I think of myself my mind cannot soar to higher things but is like a bird with broken wings.
TERESA OF AVILA
The Interior Castle
Who knows the mind has the key to all things else.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Of all the things I've lost, it's my mind I miss the most.
OZZY OSBOURNE
attributed, Foolish Words: The Most Stupid Words Ever Spoken
As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free. Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon against the long night of physical slavery.
MARTIN LUTHER KING
speech, August 16, 1967