Quotes about mind
page 19

“There is evil! It's actual, like cement.

I can't believe it. I can't stand it.

Evil is not a view… it's an ingredient in us. In the world. Poured over us, filtering into our bodies, minds, hearts, into the pavement itself.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

Source: The Man in the High Castle

World, Evil, Heart

“Mindfulness, also called wise attention, helps us see what we’re adding to our experiences, not only during meditation sessions but also elsewhere.”

Sharon Salzberg (1952) American writer

Source: Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation

Help

“I like to stretch my mind by reading and writing and watching educational TV shows like The Bachelor to learn the complex mating rituals of heterosexuals.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Source: Seriously... I'm Kidding

Education, Learning, Reading

“The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Time

“The conventional mind is passive - it consumes information and regurgitates it in familiar forms. The dimensional mind is active, transforming everything it digests into something new and original, creating instead of consuming.”

Robert Greene book Mastery

Source: Mastery

“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

Education, Thinking, Learning, Training

“Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind.”

John Milton Comus

Source: Comus

Freedom

“Birth is okay and death is okay, if we know that they are only concepts in our mind. Reality transcends both birth and death.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation

Death, Birth, Reality

“Speak your mind even if your voice shakes.”

Maggie Kuhn (1905–1995) American activist

“I want my children to understand the world, but not just because the world is fascinating and the human mind is curious. I want them to understand it so that they will be positioned to make it a better place.”

Howard Gardner (1943) American developmental psychologist

Howard Gardner (1983), "Multiple approaches to understanding," in: Charles M. Reigeluth (ed.) Instructional-design Theories and Models: A new paradigm of ..., Volume 2. p. 69-90

Children, World, Understanding

“My mind begins to seem like a video game: I can either play it intelligently, learning more in each round, or I can be killed in the same spot by the same monster, again and again.”

Sam Harris book Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion

Source: Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion

Game, Intelligence, Learning

“Peace is not the absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition of benevolence, confidence, justice.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

War, Peace, Justice, Confidence

“A man’s at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with.”

Cormac McCarthy (1933) American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter

Blood Meridian (1985)
Source: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

“All children mythologise their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone? Heart, mind and soul? Ask him to tell you about when he was born. What you get won’t be the truth: it will be a story. And nothing is more telling than a story.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

Children, Truth, Soul, Birth

“Books are those faithful mirrors that reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes.”

Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) English historian and Member of Parliament

Books, Faith

“Even as your body betrays you, your mind denies it.”

Sara Gruen book Water for Elephants

Source: Water for Elephants

“[N]obody minds having what is too good for them.”

Jane Austen book Mansfield Park

Source: Mansfield Park

“Don't allow your mind to tell your heart what to do. The mind gives up easily”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Heart

“… we were back at home, and I had returned to that reassuring but profoundly unsatisfactory state known as 'being in one's right mind.”

Aldous Huxley book The Doors of Perception

Source: The Doors of Perception

Home

“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.”

Robertson Davies book Tempest-Tost

Source: Tempest-Tost

“Getting help for substance abuse can be reduced to the deceptively simple focus of ‘keeping away from the dope.’ But what does getting help with depression mean? Learning to keep away from your own mind?”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

Learning, Help

“For a few minutes, everything is so cute that the mind reels…. And then, believe it or not, things get worse. So I shot myself.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

“Astrology and all these mystical things are generally signs of a weak mind; therefore as soon as they are becoming prominent in our minds, we should see a physician, take good food, and rest.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Food

“They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in nightmares.”

Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness

Source: Heart of Darkness

Dreams

“To love is to admire with the heart; to admire is to love with the mind.”

Théophile Gautier (1811–1872) French writer

Love, Heart, For Him, love

“When you put your hands and mind and heart into the knowing of a thing… there is no room in you for fear.”

Patricia A. McKillip (1948) American fantasy writer

Fear, Heart

“There are just lots of possibilities in the world… I need to keep my mind open for what could happen and not decide that the world is hopeless if what I want to happen doesn't happen. Because something else great might happen in between.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

World

“Don't mind all those people who say that you should be back to normal in a month or two. Grieving is all part of helping yourself anyway.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: P.S. I Love You

People, Help, Parting

“I'd be smiling and chatting away, and my mind would be floating around somewhere else, like a balloon with a broken string.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Smile

“Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours (24 April 1816)
1810s

People, Evil

“Sometimes humans hit on a moment of profundity more complete than their dim minds could comprehend, and they took that nugget of truth and dumped it in the refuse for the bards and the poets to find, and mangle into yodeling paeans of love.”

Kelley Armstrong book Haunted

Source: Haunted

Love, Truth

“I am an instrument in the shape/ of a woman trying to translate pulsations/ into images for the relief of the body/ and the reconstruction of the mind.”

Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American poet, essayist and feminist

Source: The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984

“If we do not fill our mind with prayer, it will fill itself with anxieties, worries, temptations, resentments, and unwelcome memories.”

Scott Hahn (1957) American theologian

Source: Signs of Life: 40 Catholic Customs and Their Biblical Roots

Memory

“I have to speak my mind. Because what is in my mind is always more interesting than what is happening in the world outside my mind.”

John Wilmot (1748–1815) English politician

World

“Outliers are those who have been given opportunities—and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: Outliers: The Story of Success

“She said she thought there were different ways of loving someone, and there were some she used to think were the most important, and now she had changed her mind.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Tiger Lily

Love, Way, Thinking, Change

“Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book -and does”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

Books

“And it was this image that was stamped on the hearts and minds of all who were present that day. Of Froi of the Exiles holding the future of Lumatere in his hands.”

Melina Marchetta Finnikin of the Rock

Source: Finnikin of the Rock

Future, Heart

“There is no way our little minds can comprehend the love of God. But that didn't keep him from coming.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Source: America Looks Up: Reaching Toward Heaven for Hope and Healing

Love, God, Way

“This isn't what I expected when I found out you were sleeping in the house."
"What did you expect?"
"I expected you'd come over here because you couldn't wait an extra minute to have fabulous, mind-blowing sex with me.”

Charlaine Harris Dead in the Family

Source: Dead in the Family

Sex, Sleep, Waiting, Housing

“don't stop to think of the words when you do stop, just stop to think of the picture better-and let your mind off yourself in this work.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Source: Dr Sax

Thinking

“Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to a mind when it has once seized on it like a lichen on a rock."
- Frankenstein p115”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

Nature, Knowledge

“Deep in the fundamental heart of mind and Universe there is a reason.”

Douglas Adams Life, the Universe and Everything

Source: Life, the Universe and Everything

Universe, Heart

“I’m tired of my life and my mind wants to die.”

Sarah Kane book 4.48 Psychosis

Source: 4.48 Psychosis

Life

“Poets are masters of us ordinary men, in knowledge of the mind,
because they drink at streams which we have not yet made accessible to science.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Men, Drink, Knowledge, Science

“When Reality is a prison, Your mind can set you free.”

Zack Snyder (1966) American film director, film producer, and screenwriter

Reality

“A woman shaking in fear from demons in her mind, and the old man who loves her more deeply than life itself, crying softly in the corner, his face in his hands.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Love, Life, Fear, Cry

“Due to attachment, anger, and foolishness, I have committed numberless mistakes in speech, deed and thought. I bow my head and repent. I vow from today to begin anew, to live day and night in mindfulness, and not to repeat my previous mistakes.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Anger, Night

“you and I have good enough minds to know how very limited and finite they really are. The naked intellect is an extraordinarily inaccurate instrument.”

Madeleine L'Engle A Wind in the Door

Source: A Wind in the Door

“Much reading after a certain age diverts the mind from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking,”

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

1930s, Wisehart interview (1930)
Context: Much reading after a certain age diverts the mind from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking, just as the man who spends too much time in the theaters is apt to be content with living vicariously instead of living his own life.

Age, Thinking, Reading

“a cheerful voice said in his mind.”

Brandon Sanderson book Words of Radiance

Source: Words of Radiance

“Our minds work alike, she thought. She had found her partner, her equal, the one to work and live and love with her. Her soulmate.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Night World, No. 2

Love

“Footfalls echo in the memory
down the passage we did not take
towards the door we never opened
into the rose garden. My words echo
thus, in your mind”

T.S. Eliot book Four Quartets

Variant: Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden.
Source: Four Quartets

Memory

“All this new stuff goes on top
turn it over, turn it over
wait and water down
from the dark bottom
turn it inside out
let it spread through
Sift down even.
Watch it sprout.

A mind like compost.”

Gary Snyder (1930) American poet

Water, Waiting

“Have a purpose in life, and having it, throw into your work such strength of mind and muscle as God has given you.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Life, God

“How many times… have you encountered the saying, 'When the student is ready, the Master speaks?' Do you know why that is true? The door opens. The Master is everywhere, but the student has to open his mind to hear the Masters Voice.”

Robert Anton Wilson book Masks of the Illuminati

Source: Masks of the Illuminati

Time

“Maybe that’s enlightenment enough: to know that there is no final resting place of the mind; no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom… is realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go. -Anthony Bourdain”

Anthony Bourdain (1956–2018) Chef and food writer

No Reservations - Machu Picchu
Context: It seems that the more places I see and experience, the bigger I realize the world to be. The more I become aware of, the more I realize how relatively little I know of it, how many places I have still to go, how much more there is to learn. Maybe that's enlightenment enough - to know that there is no final resting place of the mind, no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom, at least for me, means realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go.

Wisdom

“Humans aren’t a protected class. (Acheron)
Really? (Jaden)
Yeah. Savitar shares your ‘all humans are vermin’ mind set. (Savitar)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

“A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Variant: A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

Change

“It would probably astound each of us beyond measure to be let into his neighbors mind and to find how different the scenery was there from that of his own.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

“No one starts a war--or rather, no one in his sense ought to do so--without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by the war and how he intends to conduct it.”

Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831) German-Prussian soldier and military theorist

War, Sense

“The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”

Steve Biko (1946–1977) anti-apartheid activist in South Africa

White Racism and Black Consciousness
I Write What I Like (1978)
Variant: The greatest weapon in the hand of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.

“To escape from the world means that one's mind is not concerned with the opinions of the world.”

Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher

Source: A Primer Of Soto Zen

World

“I remember a friend many years ago who had taped a sign to his refrigerator: There's a dream dreaming us. If you try to think about what that means it makes your mind silly, but that silliness is good.”

Natalie Goldberg (1948) American writer

Source: Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life

Dreams, Thinking

“Mind led body
to the edge of the precipice.
They stared in desire
at the naked abyss.
If you love me, said mind,
take that step into silence.
If you love me, said body,
turn and exist.”

Anne Stevenson (1933) Poet

Love, Silence

“The most fruitful and natural exercise for our minds is, in my opinion, conversation.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Source: The Essays: A Selection

Exercises, Nature

“Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.”

Barbara W. Tuchman book The Guns of August

Source: The Guns of August

Dead

“Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. It is the result of long and patient effort in self-control. Its presence is an indication of ripened experience, and of a more than ordinary knowledge of the laws and operations of thought.”

James Allen book As a Man Thinketh

As A Man Thinketh (1902), Serenity
Source: As a Man Thinketh

Wisdom, Law, Beauty, Knowledge

“If he had a mind, there was something on it.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

“I squeeze my eyes shut and try to reach for him across the hundreds and hundreds of miles, to send my thoughts into his mind, to let him know he is not alone. But he is. And I can't help him.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Help

“Being a stranger was like being dead,
and brought to mind how, in a book he had read
that most folks misunderstood one common state:
The flip side of love is indifference, not hate.”

David Rakoff (1964–2012) writer

Source: Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish

Love, Hate, Books, Reading

“the area dividing the brain and the soul
is affected in many ways by
experience –
some lose all mind and become soul:
insane.
some lose all soul and become mind:
intellectual.
some lose both and become:
accepted.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Variant: The area dividing the brain and the soul
Is affected in many ways by experience --
Some lose all mind and become soul:
insane.
Some lose all soul and become mind:
intellectual.
Some lose both and become:
accepted.
Source: You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

Way, Soul

“It's good to keep changing your mind. It shows you're thinking. I'll only stop changing my mind when I'm dead. And maybe not even then.”

John Marsden (1950) author

Source: Darkness, Be My Friend

Thinking, Change, Dead