quotations about the mind
Who knows the mind has the key to all things else.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
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
The immortal mind, superior to his fate, amid the outrage of external things, firm as the solid base of this great world, rests on his own foundation. Blow, ye winds! Ye waves! ye thunders! roll your tempests on! Shake, ye old pillars of the marble sky! Till at its orbs and all its worlds of fire be loosen'd from their seats; yet still serene, the unconquer'd mind looks down upon the wreck; and ever stronger as the storms advance, firm through the closing ruin holds is way, when nature calls him to the destin'd goal.
MARK AKENSIDE
The Pleasures of Imagination
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
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
Everyone's shut off their minds
So I'll turn on mine
CHESTER BENNINGTON
"Walking in Circles"
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
Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in; it stains the ancient mass; but it is also tinged by what absorbs it.
WILLIAM JAMES
Lecture V, "Pragmatism and Common Sense", Pragmatism
The mind is the attribute of man. When man is born, he comes into existence with only one weapon with him--The reasoning mind.
AYN RAND
The Fountainhead
Our mind is but a lump of clay
That Fate, grim potter, holds
On sorrow's wheel that rolls away,
And, as he pleases, moulds.
BHARTRHARI
"On Time the Destroyer"
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
It's a good thing to turn your mind upside down now and then, like an hour-glass, to let the particles run the other way.
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
The Haunted Bookshop
There are materials enough in every man's mind to make a hell there.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Few minds wear out; more rust out.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
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
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
For me, the adventures of the mind, each inflection of thought, each movement, nuance, growth, discovery, is a source of exhilaration.
ANAIS NIN
diary, November 1933
If the human mind naturally produces noisome weeds, it also produces flowers and fruit; and ... the best method to mend the soil in general, is for each of us to cultivate his own particular spot.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
The mind is international and supra-national ... it ought to serve not war and annihilation, but peace and reconciliation.
HERMANN HESSE
letter read at Nobel banquet, December 10, 1946
Persons without minds are like weeds that delight in good earth; they want to be amused by others, all the more because they are dull within.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Vicar of Tours