“The mind is like a well-endowed museum, only a small fraction of its holdings on view at any one time.”

—  James Richardson

#407
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The mind is like a well-endowed museum, only a small fraction of its holdings on view at any one time." by James Richardson?
James Richardson photo
James Richardson 89
American poet 1950

Related quotes

Glen Cook photo

“Like most villains, he was wicked only most of the time and mainly in small-minded ways.”

Glen Cook book Water Sleeps

Source: Water Sleeps (1999), Chapter 7 (p. 34)

Derek Landy photo

“Dublin City was quiet when they reached the Waxwork Museum, as if it was holding its breath.”

Derek Landy Skulduggery Pleasant

Source: Skulduggery Pleasant

Aldo Leopold photo

“Like all real treasures of the mind, perception can be split into infinitely small fractions without losing its quality. The weeds in a city lot convey the same lesson as the redwoods; the farmer may see in his cow-pasture what may not be vouchsafed to the scientist adventuring in the South Seas.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Conservation Esthetic", p. 174.

Tanith Lee photo

“Dust had dimmed only a fraction, not enough. Decay had brushed with its rotten fingers not nearly all it should. It was an enchanted sweet, stuck in the throat of time.”

Tanith Lee book Vazkor, Son of Vazkor

Book Two, Part II “The Wolf Hunt”, Chapter 1 (p. 166)
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (1978)

George William Curtis photo

“The debate forced upon the mind of the country this question. Does the Constitution, made at the time we know, by the men we know, holding the views we know, for the distinct intention it declares, stultify itself by securing the destruction of its expressed purposes?”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Arthur C. Clarke photo

“There was nothing like a museum for calming the mind, for putting the problems of everyday life in their true perspective. Here, surrounded by the infinite variety and wonder of Nature, he was reminded of truths he had forgotten. He was only one of a million million creatures that shared this planet Earth. The entire human race, with its hopes and fears, its triumphs and its follies, might be no more than an incident in the history of the world.”

Arthur C. Clarke book Death and the Senator

Death and the Senator, p. 744
2000s and posthumous publications, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (2001)

Haruki Murakami photo

“Sometimes I feel like a caretaker of a museum -- a huge, empty museum where no one ever comes, and I'm watching over it for no one but myself.”

Haruki Murakami book Pinball, 1973

Source: Pinball, 1973

“A nation that silences or intimidates original minds is left only with unoriginal minds and cannot hope to hold its own in the competition of peace or of war.”

Henry Steele Commager (1902–1998) American historian

Source: Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954), p. 80

John Cotton Dana photo

“A great department store, easily reached, open at all hours, is more like a good museum of art than any of the museums we have yet established.”

John Cotton Dana (1856–1929) American librarian and museum director

New York Times, March 16, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/arts/17iht-rartmuseums.html

Immanuel Kant photo

“Whatever concept one may hold, from a metaphysical point of view, concerning the freedom of the will, certainly its appearances, which are human actions, like every other natural event are determined by universal laws.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Introduction
Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View (1784)
Context: Whatever concept one may hold, from a metaphysical point of view, concerning the freedom of the will, certainly its appearances, which are human actions, like every other natural event are determined by universal laws. However obscure their causes, history, which is concerned with narrating these appearances, permits us to hope that if we attend to the play of freedom of the human will in the large, we may be able to discern a regular movement in it, and that what seems complex and chaotic in the single individual may be seen from the standpoint of the human race as a whole to be a steady and progressive though slow evolution of its original endowment.

Related topics