“The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking.”

Last update Oct. 1, 2023. History

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Christopher Morley30

American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet 1890–1957

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“It seems to me that the real problem is the mind itself, and not the problem which the mind has created and tries to solve. If the mind is petty, small, narrow, limited, however great and complex the problem may be, the mind approaches that problem in terms of its own pettiness. If I have a little mind and I think of God, the God of my thinking will be a little God, though I may clothe him with grandeur, beauty, wisdom, and all the rest of it.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

Sixth Talk in New Delhi (31 October 1956) http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-text.php?tid=570&chid=4889&w=%22It+seems+to+me+that+the+real+problem+is+the+mind+itself%22, J.Krishnamurti Online, JKO Serial No. 561031, Vol. X, p. 155 <br class="br">1950s <br class="br">Context: It seems to me that the real problem is the mind itself, and not the problem which the mind has created and tries to solve. If the mind is petty, small, narrow, limited, however great and complex the problem may be, the mind approaches that problem in terms of its own pettiness. If I have a little mind and I think of God, the God of my thinking will be a little God, though I may clothe him with grandeur, beauty, wisdom, and all the rest of it. It is the same with the problem of existence, the problem of bread, the problem of love, the problem of sex, the problem of relationship, the problem of death. These are all enormous problems, and we approach them with a small mind; we try to resolve them with a mind that is very limited. Though it has extraordinary capacities and is capable of invention, of subtle, cunning thought, the mind is still petty. It may be able to quote Marx, or the Gita, or some other religious book, but it is still a small mind, and a small mind confronted with a complex problem can only translate that problem in terms of itself, and therefore the problem, the misery increases. So the question is: Can the mind that is small, petty, be transformed into something which is not bound by its own limitations?

“[I do not] carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books. …The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.”

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

In response to not knowing the speed of sound as included in the Edison Test: New York Times (18 May 1921); Einstein: His Life and Times (1947) Philipp Frank, p. 185; Einstein, A Life (1996) by Denis Brian, p. 129; "Einstein Due Today" (February 2005) edited by József Illy, Manuscript 25-32 of the Einstein Paper Project; all previous sources as per Einstein His Life and Universe (2007) by Walter Isaacson, p. 299 <br class="br">Unsourced variants: "I never commit to memory anything that can easily be looked up in a book" and "Never memorize what you can look up in books." (The second version is found in "Recording the Experience" (10 June 2004) at The Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/world/world-record.html, but no citation to Einstein's writings is given). <br class="br">1920s

“We are dying from overthinking. We are slowly killing ourselves by thinking about everything. Think. Think. Think. You can never trust the human mind anyway. It's a death trap.”

Anthony Hopkins (1937) Welsh stage and television actor

“The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking.”

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Christopher Morley30

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