“Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.”

— Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Often given as: A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions. Or: A mind that is stretched by a new idea can never go back to its old dimensions. Actually by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Senior, from " Autocrat of the Breakfast Table https://books.google.com/books?id=BoQ3AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA502&dq=%22stretched+by+a+new+idea%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwidspn60tTJAhVJ1GMKHbt3Bn0Q6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=%22stretched%20by%20a%20new%20idea%22&f=false", originally published in The Atlantic, September 1858. Misattributed

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Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.107

United States Supreme Court justice 1841–1935

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“Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions. After looking at the Alps, I felt that my mind had been stretched beyond the limits of its elasticity, and fitted so loosely on my old ideas of space that I had to spread these to fit it.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

“A man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935) United States Supreme Court justice

Also reported as "One's mind" instead of "A man's mind", and "can never go back" or "never regains" instead of "never goes back"; most likely properly attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Misattributed

“The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

“'The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.' That's from Emerson, by the way. All I was hoping to do is stretch some goddamn minds.”

Carl Hiaasen book Squeeze Me

Epilogue
Novels, Squeeze Me (2020)

“The mind, once stretched by an idea, never returns to its original dimension.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big (1996), p. 224

“The mind that opens to a new idea, Never comes back to its original size.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Actually said by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. in his book The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table: "Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions."
Misattributed

“If space in infinite, how about the space inside man? Blake said that eternity opens from the center of an atom. My former terror vanished. Now I saw that I was mistaken in thinking of myself as an object in a dead landscape. I had been assuming that man is limited because his brain is limited, that only so much can be packed into the portmanteau. But the spaces of the mind are a new dimension. The body is a mere wall between two infinities. Space extends to infinity outwards; the mind stretches to infinity inwards.”

Colin Wilson book The Mind Parasites

Source: The Mind Parasites (1967), p. 38

“Humanity has emerged from its former degrees of limitation and preliminary training. Man must now become imbued with new virtues and powers, new moralities, new capacities.”

`Abdu'l-Bahá (1844–1921) Son of Bahá'u'lláh and leader of the Bahá'í Faith

"The True Modernism" http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/c/FWU/fwu-1.html Foundations of World Unity Context: Humanity has emerged from its former degrees of limitation and preliminary training. Man must now become imbued with new virtues and powers, new moralities, new capacities. New bounties, bestowals and perfections are awaiting and already descending upon him.

“Every man, as the Stoics used to say, is first and principally recommended to his own care; and every man is certainly, in every respect, fitter and abler to take care of himself than of any other person. Every man feels his own pleasures and his own pains more sensibly than those of other people. The former are the original sensations; the latter the reflected or sympathetic images of those sensations. The former may be said to be the substance; the latter the shadow.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Section II, Chap. I.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part VI

“At first our pupil had merely sensations, now he has ideas; he could only feel, now he reasons. For from the comparison of many successive or simultaneous sensations and the judgment arrived at with regard to them, there springs a sort of mixed or complex sensation which I call an idea. The way in which ideas are formed gives a character to the human mind. The mind which derives its ideas from real relations is thorough; the mind which relies on apparent relations is superficial. He who sees relations as they are has an exact mind; he who fails to estimate them aright has an inaccurate mind; he who concocts imaginary relations, which have no real existence, is a madman; he who does not perceive any relation at all is an imbecile. Clever men are distinguished from others by their greater or less aptitude for the comparison of ideas and the discovery of relations between them. Simple ideas consist merely of sensations compared one with another. Simple sensations involve judgments, as do the complex sensations which I call simple ideas. In the sensation the judgment is purely passive; it affirms that I feel what I feel. In the percept or idea the judgment is active; it connects, compares, it discriminates between relations not perceived by the senses. That is the whole difference; but it is a great difference. Nature never deceives us; we deceive ourselves.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau book Emile, or On Education

Emile, or On Education (1762), Book III

“Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.”

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Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.107

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