Introductory
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)
Context: It is a remarkable fact in the history of science, that the more extended human knowledge has become, the more limited human power, in that respect, has constantly appeared. This globe, of which man imagines the haughty possessor, becomes, in the eyes of astronomer, merely a grain of dust floating in immensity of space: an earthquake, a tempest, an inundation, may destroy in an instant an entire people, or ruin the labours of twenty ages.... But if each step in the career of science thus gradually diminishes his importance, his pride has a compensation in the greater idea of his intellectual power, by which he has been enabled to perceive those laws which seem to be, by their nature, placed for ever beyond his grasp.
“There is no limit to the power of the human mind. The more concentrated it is, the more power is brought to bear on one point”
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Swami Vivekananda 261
Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher 1863–1902Related quotes
“The powers of the mind are like the rays of the sun when they are concentrated they illumine.”
Pearls of Wisdom
Context: Circumstances have been such, that I have lived almost entirely secluded for some time. Those who are much in earnest and with single minds devoted to any great object in life, must find this occasionally inevitable.... You will wonder at having heard nothing from me; but you have experience and candour enough to perceive and know that God has not given to us (in this state of existence) more than very limited powers of expression of one's ideas and feelings... I shall be very desirous of again seeing you. You know what that means from me, and that it is no form, but the simple expression and result of the respect and attraction I feel for a mind that ventures to read direct in God's own book, and not merely thro' man's translation of that same vast and mighty work.
In a letter to Andrew Crosse, as quoted in Eugen Kölbing's Englische Studien, Volume 19 https://archive.org/stream/englischestudien19leipuoft#page/157/mode/1up (1894), Leipzig; O.R. Reisland, "Byron's Daughter", p. 157.
Source: The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order - Second Edition - (2003), Chapter 4, The World Bank and Woman's Rights, p. 67
“The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.”
Proper Studies (1927)
Source: "The End of Reason" (1941), p. 44.
“There is nothing more powerful than the made-up mind.”
TED Talk: Mind-Shifting Everest Swim, July 2010 http://www.ted.com/talks/lewis_pugh_s_mind_shifting_mt_everest_swim.html
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