Quotes about mind (10000 quotes, page 39)

“The apparent discrepancy in the Gospel narrative aroused no doubt in my mind as to the literal truth of either of the texts. Indeed, my falling away from grace was not occasioned by any intellectual qualms; I accepted the theology of the Plymouth Brethren. In fact, I could hardly conceive of the existence of people who might doubt it. I simply went over to Satan's side; and to this hour I cannot tell why.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Source: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (1929), Ch. 5.

People , Truth

“I heard of your marriage, Cathy, not long since; and, while waiting in the yard below, I meditated this plan — just to have one glimpse of your face — a stare of surprise, perhaps, and pretended pleasure; afterward settle my score with Hindley; and then prevent the law by doing execution on myself. Your welcome has put these ideas out of my mind; but beware of meeting me with another aspect next time!”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Heathcliff (Ch. X).
Wuthering Heights (1847)

Marriage , Pleasure , Law , Idea

“It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light. First, believe in this world — that there is meaning behind everything. Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil, think that you are not understanding it in the right light. throw the burden on yourselves!”

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

Pearls of Wisdom

World , Beauty , Understanding , Thinking

“Seek first the virtues of the mind; and other things either will come, or will not be wanted”
Primum quaerite bona animi; caetera aut aderunt, aut non oberunt

Francis Bacon book The Advancement of Learning

Book II, xxxi
The Advancement of Learning (1605)

“When you think of natural ballplayers, only two come into mind, Babe Ruth and Willie Mays.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

As quoted in "In Willie's time, he was No. 1" http://static.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/neyer_rob/1191263.html by Rob Neyer, at ESPN, posted May 4, 2001
Sports-related

Nature , Thinking

“The human mind is capable of excitement without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Preface.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

Beauty

“The mathematical forms of order which the mind of a physicist manipulates coincides "miraculously" with experimental measurements.”

Marie-Louise von Franz (1915–1998) Swiss psychologist and scholar

Source: Psyche and Matter (1992), p. 269

Mathematics

“The enemies will be asking reasonable questions, like Isn't politics the way matters are really decided, and isn't the rational systems approach simply one political device, to be used when politically expedient? Or isn't morality essentially inexpressible in terms of concepts and words, and doesn't this essentially ineffable quality of our lives lead us humans to decide the way we do? Or, isn't religious imagery really the basis of all our perspectives and concepts, including the perspective of the systems approach? And what is it that carries the values we humans cherish? It is not the ego or the mind, but, say our basic aesthetic feeling, which cannot be conceptualized. And finally, and most generally, why is a rational, holistic approach desirable for the human species, especially since it so often gets out of hand, missing the vital essence of the specific and individual, the here and now, encompassing "everything" to the exclusion of every thing?”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach and Its Enemies (1979), p. 69; As cited in: Book Review: The Systems Approach and its Enemies http://phd-take-2.wikispaces.com/The+Systems+Approach+and+its+Enemies

Way , Feeling , Question

“The material world has only been constructed at the price of taking the self, that is, mind, out of it, removing it; mind is not part of it…”

Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) Austrian physicist

Mind and Matter (1958)

World , Parting

“With highly civilised nations continued progress depends in a subordinate degree on natural selection; for such nations do not supplant and exterminate one another as do savage tribes. Nevertheless the more intelligent members within the same community will succeed better in the long run than the inferior, and leave a more numerous progeny, and this is a form of natural selection. The more efficient causes of progress seem to consist of a good education during youth whilst the brain is impressible, and of a high standard of excellence, inculcated by the ablest and best men, embodied in the laws, customs and traditions of the nation, and enforced by public opinion. It should, however, be borne in mind, that the enforcement of public opinion depends on our appreciation of the approbation and disapprobation of others; and this appreciation is founded on our sympathy, which it can hardly be doubted was originally developed through natural selection as one of the most important elements of the social instincts.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume I, chapter V: "On the Development of the Intellectual and Moral Faculties during Primeval and Civilised Times" (second edition, 1874) page 143 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=166&itemID=F944&viewtype=image
The Descent of Man (1871)

Men , Youth , Education , Law

“Science condemns itself to failure when, yielding to the infatuation of the serious, it aspires to attain being, to contain it, and to possess it; but it finds its truth if it considers itself as a free engagement of thought in the given, aiming, at each discovery, not at fusion with the thing, but at the possibility of new discoveries; what the mind then projects is the concrete accomplishment of its freedom.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Ethics of Ambiguity

Pt. III : The Positive Aspect of Ambiguity, Ch. 3 : Freedom and Liberation
The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)

Truth , Failure , Freedom , Science

“The old Romans had a custom which survived even into my lifetime. They would add to the opening words of a letter: "If you are well, it is well; I also am well." Persons like ourselves would do well to say. "If you are studying philosophy, it is well." For this is just what "being well" means. Without philosophy the mind is sickly.”
Mos antiquis fuit, usque ad meam servatus aetatem, primis epistulae verbis adicere 'si vales bene est, ego valeo'. Recte nos dicimus 'si philosopharis, bene est'. Valere enim hoc demum est. Sine hoc aeger est animus.

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Mos antiquis fuit, usque ad meam servatus aetatem, primis epistulae verbis adicere 'si vales bene est, ego valeo'. Recte nos dicimus 'si philosopharis, bene est'.
Valere enim hoc demum est. Sine hoc aeger est animus.
Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XV

Study , Personality

“As you can see this is a composition of vertical and horizontal lines which will (in an abstract manner) have to express the idea of rising upwards, of magnitude. This is the same idea which used, for example, to be the guiding principle in the construction of cathedrals. Since only the manner of expression and not the representation has to express this general idea, I have not given any title. An abstract human mind will, of itself, receive the intended impression. I always confine myself to expressing the general.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote in Mondrian's letter to Theo van Doesburg, Amsterdam, 1915; as cited in Letters of the great artists, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 234 (transl. Daphne Woodward)
1910's

Idea

“Revolted by the butchery of the 1914 World War, we in Zurich devoted ourselves to the arts. While guns rumbled in the distance, we sang, painted, made collages and wrote poems with all our might. We were seeking an art based on fundamentals, to cure the madness of the age, and find a new order of things that would restore the balance between heaven and hell. We had a dim premonition that power-mad gangsters would one day use art itself as a way of deadening men's minds.”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

Dadaland (1948); Quoted in: Cosana Maria Eram (2010) The autobiographical pact: otherness and redemption in four French avant-garde artists, p. 20
Quote of Jean Arp, referring to Swiss Dada in Zurich after 1914.
1940s

Men , War , Age , World

“I am aware that the great Plato himself, and after him, a man posterior to him in date, though not in mind, I mean Iamblichus of Chalcis (who initiated us into other branches of philosophy, and also into this by means of his discourses), did both of them as far as hypothesis goes, take for granted the fact of a Creation and assumed the universe to have been, in a certain sense, the Work of Time, in order that the most important of the effects produced by this Power, may be reduced into a shape for examination.”

Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer

Upon the Sovereign Sun (362)

Sense , Universe , Time

“This was a solitary walk where the sun and the scents of wild flowers would act on a tortured mind like a soothing drug.”

Lindsey Davis book See Delphi and Die

See Delphi and Die

Flowers , Sun

“The circumstance-adaptive law, operating upon the slight but continued natural disposition to sport in the progeny (seedling variety), does not preclude the supposed influence which volition or sensation may have over the configuration of the body. To examine into the disposition to sport in the progeny, even when there is only one parent, as in many vegetables, and to investigate how much variation is modified by the mind or nervous sensation of the parents, or of the living thing itself during its progress to maturity; how far it depends upon external circumstance, and how far on the will, irritability and muscular exertion, is open to examination and experiment. In the first place, we ought to investigate its dependency upon the preceding links of the particular chain of life, varieties being often merely types or approximations of former parentage; thence the variation of the family, as well as of the individual, must be embraced by our experiments.”

Patrick Matthew (1790–1874) British scientist

On naval timber and arboriculture (1831), Appendix F, part II

Life , Family , Law , Nature

“My mind is incapable of conceiving such a thing as a soul. I may be in error, and man may have a soul; but I simply do not believe it. What a soul may be is beyond my understanding.”

Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American inventor and businessman

"Do We Live Again?" an interview with Edison, as quoted in Mr. Edison's New Argument from Design" in The Illustrated London News (3 May 1924).
1920s

Error , Soul , Understanding

“I like breakfast-time better than any other moment in the day," said Mr. Irwine. "No dust has settled on one's mind then, and it presents a clear mirror to the rays of things.”

George Eliot book Adam Bede

Adam Bede (1859)

Time

“A double problem arises: There is first the difficulty of, if not the impossibility of demonstrating the existence of any creator or designer at all. I think I say something uncontroversial when I say that no theologian has ever conclusively demonstrated that such a designer can or does or ever has existed. The most you can do, by way of the argument from design, is to infer him or her or it from an apparent harmony in the arrangements - and this was at a time when that was the very best that, so to speak, could be done. But religion goes a little further than this already rather impossible task, and expects us to believe as follows: that the speaker not only can prove the existence of a said entity, but can claim to know this entity's mind - in fact, can claim to know it quite intimately; can claim to know his or her personal wishes; can, in turn, tell you what you may do, in his name - a quite large arrogation of power, you will suddenly notice, is being granted to the speaker here. The speaker can tell you that he knows - he cannot tell you how - but he can tell you that he knows, for example, that heaven hates ham, that god doesn't want you to eat pork products; he can tell you that god has a very very strong view about with whom you may have sexual relations, indeed, how you may have sexual relations with others; he can indicate, perhaps a little less convincingly but no less firmly, that there are certain books or courses of study that you might want to avoid or treat with great suspicion.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Christopher Hitchens vs. Marvin Olasky, 14/05/2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMgMUHD_kPI?t=1m35s
2000s, 2007

God , Hate , Books , Religion

“If a symbolic language dies, it tortures us like a nightmare, like a thousand piece orchestra grating on our nerves and tearing our mind to pieces... It is a corpse with no symbolic power or strength.”

Asger Jorn (1914–1973) Danish artist

quoted in Asger Jorn (2002) by Arken Museum of Modern Art, p. 166
Jorn is talking about symbolism of the Nordic myths
1959 - 1973, Various sources

Tear

“Lucidity of mind, like the rays of the sun, can have no effect except by the continuity of a direct line; it can divine only on condition of not breaking that line; the curvettings of chance bemuddle it.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

La lucidité, de même que les rayons du soleil, n’a d’effet que par la fixité de la ligne droite, elle ne devine qu’à la condition de ne pas rompre son regard; elle se trouble dans les sautillements de la chance.
Source: A Bachelor's Establishment (1842), Ch. IV.

Chance , Sun

“I had no idea Gwendolen knew any foreign languages, and I am not sure that I approve. It's the sort of thing that can only broaden a girl's mind.”

Tom Stoppard Travesties

Carr, Act I
Travesties (1974)

Girl , Idea

“I welcome an end to this all if that's what should be, I don't mind that. In fact, I would rather quit while I was ahead. There's no need in overstaying your welcome.”

River Phoenix (1970–1993) American actor, musician, and activist

E! Television (1988)

“It was cold and clammy in the stone cell; they called it the "cooler," and used it to reduce the temperature of the violent and intractable. It was a trouble-saving device; they just left the man there and forgot him, and his own tormented mind did the rest.”

Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) American novelist, writer, journalist, political activist

Section 4
100%: the Story of a Patriot (1920)

“Adams could no more interest Algernon Swinburne than he could interest Encke's comet. To Swinburne he could be no more than a worm. The quality of genius was an education almost ultimate, for one touched there the limits of the human mind on that side; but one could only receive; one had nothing to give — nothing even to offer.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Education

“And for yourself, may the gods grant you
Your heart's desire, a husband and a home,
And the blessing of a harmonious life.
For nothing is greater or finer than this,
When a man and woman live together
With one heart and mind, bringing joy
To their friends and grief to their foes.”

Stanley Lombardo (1943) Philosopher, Classicist

Book VI, lines 183–189; Odysseus to Nausicaa.
Translations, Odyssey (2000)

Life , God , Home , Heart

“Wolf Blitzer: Why is the Republican party basically posion for so many African Americans?
Herman Cain: Because many African Americans have been brainwashed into not being open-minded, not even considering a conservative point of view. I have received some of that same vitriol simply because I am running for the Republican nomination as a conservative. So it's just brainwashing and people not being open-minded, pure and simple.
Wolf Blitzer: That's a strong word to talk about your fellow African Americans, "brainwashed"?
Herman Cain: For two thirds of them, Wolf, that is the case.”

Herman Cain (1945) American writer, businessman and activist

The Situation Room
Television
CNN
2011-09-28
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/28/cain-black-community-brainwashed-into-voting-for-dems/
2011-10-08

People , Strong , Wolf

“The God of religion exists only in our minds. The real God exists but we can never comprehend him in our minds”

Siddharth Katragadda (1972) Indian writer

page 36
The Other Wife (2003)

God , Religion

“Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Truth
Essays (1625)

Truth

“The concept of leadership has an ambiguous status in organizational practice, as it does in organizational theory. In practice, management appears to be of two minds about the exercise of leadership. Many jobs are so specified in content and method that within very broad limits differences among individuals become irrelevant, and acts of leadership are regarded as gratuitous at best, and at worst insubordinate”

Daniel Katz (1903–1998) American psychologist

Source: The Social Psychology of Organizations (1966), p. 300

Exercises , Appearance

“Others such as these met him in the outer mountain and thought to mock him because he had not learned letters. And Antony said to them, 'What do you say? Which is first, mind or letters? And which is the cause of which— mind of letters or letters of mind.' And when they answered mind is first and the inventor of letters, Antony said, 'Whoever, therefore, has a sound mind has not need of letters.”

Athanasius of Alexandria (295–373) Patriarch of Alexandria

§ 73
Life of Anthony of Egypt

Mountain , Learning

“The variety of minds served the economy of nature in many ways. The Creator, who designed the human brain for activity, had insured the restlessness of all minds by enabling no single one to envisage all the qualities of the creation. Since no one by himself could aspire to a serene knowledge of the whole truth, all men had been drawn into an active, exploratory and cooperative attitude.”

Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian

Source: The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson (1948), Ch. 3, Part 2: The Happy Variety of Minds, p. 125.

Men , Truth , Way , Nature

“I just don't get it. The pigeon was already dead, we found it in the road. And no other censor has objected. What is the problem with you, English? You killed millions of Indians and Africans, and yet you go nuts about the circumstances of the death of a single Serbian pigeon. I am touched you hold the lives of Serbian birds so dear, but you are crazy. I will never understand how your minds work.”

Emir Kusturica (1954) Serbian film director, actor and musician of Bosnian origin

In an interview in The Guardian (4 March 2005) http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,6737,1429569,00.html about a British censor demanding that a shot of a cat pouncing on a pigeon be cut from his film Life is a Miracle
2000s

Death , Understanding , Problem , Bird

“Reality can neither be proved nor disproved. Within the mind you cannot, beyond the mind you need not. In the real, the question ‘what is real?’ does not arise. (…)”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Reality
Source: "I am That." P.94.

Question , Reality

“And when you maintain this sense of peace and you live by truth, by integrity, these things don't bother me. It doesn't. I have been experiencing moribund type experiences most of my life. I could have died many a times. I could have died when I was shot. I could have died when I was shot at by the police and rival gang members. There were many opportunities for me to die. Of course, I don't want to die. I mean, after my redemption I have what I consider to be a joie de vivre, so, you know, I have an enjoyment, a love for life. So that’s why I can calmly sit here and speak to you or anyone else with peace in my heart and peace in my mind. I don't get rattled. Nothing can rattle me. Nothing will ever rattle me. I have been rattled the majority of my life.”

Stanley Tookie Williams (1953–2005) American criminal

Democracy Now! interview (2005)

Love , Life , Truth , Peace

“That is a true sentiment which makes us feel that we do not love our country less, but more, because we have laid up in our minds the knowledge of other lands and other institutions and other races, and have had enkindled afresh within us the instinct of a common humanity, and of the universal beneficence of the Creator.”

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815–1881) English churchman, Dean of Westminster

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 442.

Love , Feeling , Knowledge , Universe

“Liberal Arts may ultimately prove to be the most relevant learning model. People trained in the Liberal Arts learn to tolerate ambiguity and to bring order out of apparent confusion. They have the kind of sideways thinking and cross-classifying habit of mind that comes from learning, among other things, the many different ways of looking at literary works, social systems, chemical processes or languages.”

Roger Smith (executive) (1925–2007) CEO

Cited in: " Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies: What is Liberal Studies? http://scs.georgetown.edu/departments/4/bachelor-of-arts-in-liberal-studies/department-details.cfm#f2" on georgetown.edu about bachelor of arts in liberal studies, 2013.
The liberal arts and the art of management (1987)

People , Art , Way , Thinking

“(Prince Duan and others) with the support of Empress Dowager took control of the Manchu Imperial Court. Using the most ignorant mind, by the most despicable means, with the most selfish goal, using Yihetuan, which was the most prone to rioting social underclass, to "support the Qing, eliminate the foreigners", and to takeover the regime. This coup d'etat was repeated 66 years later, by those aggressive Red Guards (China). History repeated itself, in minute details.”

Tong Tekong (1920–2009) historian

http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/ics/21c/supplem/essay/0007038.htm

History , Support , Selfishness

“The adventurous state of / mind is a high house // To enjoy life the adventurous / state of mind must be / grasped and maintained // The essential feature of adventure is that it is a / going forward into / unknown territory // The joy of adventure is unaccountable // This is the attractiveness of / art work. It is adventurous, / strenuous and joyful.”

Agnes Martin (1912–2004) American artist

poem before 1973; in a exh. cat., ed. Suzanne Delehanty (1973; repr., Philadelphia: The Falcon Press, 1976), p. 40
1970's

Life , Art , Joy , Housing

“My country has been influenced by the core Buddhist values of non-violence, loving kindness, compassion, equanimity and mindfulness. With this sense of direction, our Government has committed itself "Towards a new Sri Lanka", guided by a vision of peace, where every Sri Lankan citizen may live with dignity and self-respect, in freedom and without fear, free of want, and where every child may enjoy childhood and grow up with hope and expectation.”

Mahinda Rajapaksa (1945) Prime Minister of Sri Lanka

Mahinda Rajapaksa; Address to the United Nations General Assembly, September 20, 2006.

Love , Fear , Peace , Hope

“I haven't tried to picture this war in a big, broad-minded way. I'm not old enough to understand what it's all about, and I'm not experienced enough to judge its failures and successes. My reactions are those of a young guy who has been exposed to some of it, and I try to put those reactions in my drawings. Since I'm a cartoonist maybe I can be funny after the war, but nobody who has seen this war can be cute about it while it's going on. The only way I can try to be a little funny is to make something out of the humorous situations which come up even when you don't think life could be any more miserable.”

Bill Mauldin (1921–2003) American editorial cartoonist

Up Front (1945)

Life , War , Way , Guy

“Being trans in some ways is very similar to being an atheist, in that some people don’t grasp it. People that come from different backgrounds just [say], “What do you mean you don’t believe in God?” They don’t get you. To them [religion] is just so obvious, and I feel like I keep on having that with gender, also. Some people just have in their mind very firm ideas of gender, and they just can’t get it into their head.”

Abby Stein (1991) Trans activist, speaker, and educator

Source: Interview with Friendly Atheist, December 7, 2015 http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/12/07/a-descendant-of-the-founder-of-hasidic-judaism-just-came-out-as-an-atheist-trans-woman/.

God , People , Religion , Way

“The world's oldest wisdom: each evil thought infuses the mind, sooner or later, with an unholy fear.”

Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007) Indian writer and guru

#106, Part 2
Twenty Seven Thousand Aspiration Plants Part 1-270 (1983)

Wisdom , World , Fear , Evil

“Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

A Defence of Poetry http://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html (1821)

“mind is full of energy, so health of the mind matters first”

Hira Ratan Manek (1937)

The lecture in Ashland, Oregon (8th of July 2005)

Health

“I'll say this about nuclear weapons. You know I'm not sitting on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I'm not in on the planning. I'll take it at face value that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff successfully eliminated nuclear weapons in the first phase of the operation.But keep in mind this. That the Bush Administration has built a new generation of nuclear weapons that we call 'usable nukes.' And they have a nuclear posture now, which permits the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons in a non-nuclear environment, if the Commander in Chief deems U. S. forces to be in significant risk.If we start bombing Iran, I'm telling you right now, it's not going to work. We're not going to achieve decapitation, regime change, all that. What will happen is the Iranians will respond, and we will feel the pain instantaneously, which will prompt the Bush administration to phase two, which will have to be boots on the ground. And we will put boots on the ground, we will surge a couple of divisions in, probably through Azerbaijan, down the Caspian Sea coast, in an effort to push the regime over. And when they don't push over, we now have 40,000 troops trapped. We have now reached the definition of significant numbers of U. S. troops in harm's way, and there is no reserve to pull them out! There's no more cavalry to come riding to the rescue. And at that point in time, my concern is that we will use nuclear weapons to break the backbone of Iranian resistance, and it may not work.But what it will do is this: it will unleash the nuclear genie. And so for all those Americans out there tonight who say, 'You know what - taking on Iran is a good thing.' I just told you if we take on Iran, we're gonna use nuclear weapons. And if we use nuclear weapons, the genie ain't going back in the bottle, until an American city is taken out by an Islamic weapon in retaliation. So, tell me, you want to go to war with Iran. Pick your city. Pick your city. Tell me which one you want gone. Seattle? L. A.? Boston? New York? Miami. Pick one. Cause at least one's going. And that's something we should all think about before we march down this path of insanity that George Bush has us headed on.</p”

Scott Ritter (1961) American weapons inspector and writer

October 16, 2006
2006

Pain , War , Way , Feeling

“To minds of a certain cast there is nothing so captivating as simplification and generalization.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book I, Introduction, p. 5
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

“The principle of bounded rationality [is] the capacity of the human mind for formulating and solving complex problems is very small compared with the size of the problems whose solution is required for objectively rational behavior in the real world — or even for a reasonable approximation to such objective rationality.”

Herbert A. Simon book Administrative Behavior

Variant: The principle of bounded rationality [is] the capacity of the human mind for formulating and solving complex problems is very small compared with the size of the problems whose solution is required for objectively rational behavior in the real world — or even for a reasonable approximation to such objective rationality.
Source: 1940s-1950s, Administrative Behavior, 1947, p. 198.

World , Behavior , Problem

“It just never occurred to me that the real distance I would have to cross would be in my own mind. In that respect, I had flown half a million miles before I moved an inch, and these three volumes are just the rattling the side of my cot made when I climbed over, on the first stage of that long, momentous journey across the carpet, towards the light of the open door.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

closing lines, p. 249
Memoirs, May Week Was in June (1990)

Light

“Ambitious young women today are taught to ignore or suppress every natural instinct, if it conflicts with the feminist agenda posed on them. All literary and artistic works, no matter how great, that document the ambivalence of female sexuality they are trained to dismiss as “misogynous.” In other words, their minds are being programmed to secede from their bodies … there is a huge gap between feminist rhetoric and women’s actual sex lives, where feminism is of little help except with a certain stratum of deferential, malleable, white middle-class men.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 31

Women , Men , Sex , Nature

“[C]an you be noble as you practice violence, extortion, blackmail, even mass murder? The struggle to be free from oppression is, in my mind, per se noble. But noble causes attract a wide range of participants, and many would fall far short of nobility”

Andrew Vachss (1942) American writer and lawyer

Amazon.com, May 2005. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/566597/ref=av_bk_2/103-6960565-0608602

“By the study of their biographies, we receive each man as a guest into our minds, and we seem to understand their character as the result of a personal acquaintance, because we have obtained from their acts the best and most important means of forming an opinion about them. "What greater pleasure could'st thou gain than this?"”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

What more valuable for the elevation of our own character?
Timoleon
Parallel Lives

Pleasure , Understanding , Study , Personality

“If we keep an open mind, too much is likely to fall into it.”

Natalie Clifford Barney (1876–1972) writer and salonist

In "Samples from Almost Illegible Notebooks", ADAM International Review, No. 299 (1962)

“The Economic definition of Wealth is subtle and diflicult to appreciate, but it is absolutely essential to our study to get it clear at the outset and keep it firmly in mind.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

Source: Economics for Helen (1924), Ch. 1 : What is Wealth?

Study , Wealth

“It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom. The universe as a whole is also weird, with laws of nature that make it hospitable to the growth of mind. I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

Progress In Religion (2000)
Context: My personal theology is described in the Gifford lectures that I gave at Aberdeen in Scotland in 1985, published under the title, Infinite In All Directions. Here is a brief summary of my thinking. The universe shows evidence of the operations of mind on three levels. The first level is elementary physical processes, as we see them when we study atoms in the laboratory. The second level is our direct human experience of our own consciousness. The third level is the universe as a whole. Atoms in the laboratory are weird stuff, behaving like active agents rather than inert substances. They make unpredictable choices between alternative possibilities according to the laws of quantum mechanics. It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom. The universe as a whole is also weird, with laws of nature that make it hospitable to the growth of mind. I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension. God may be either a world-soul or a collection of world-souls. So I am thinking that atoms and humans and God may have minds that differ in degree but not in kind. We stand, in a manner of speaking, midway between the unpredictability of atoms and the unpredictability of God. Atoms are small pieces of our mental apparatus, and we are small pieces of God's mental apparatus. Our minds may receive inputs equally from atoms and from God. This view of our place in the cosmos may not be true, but it is compatible with the active nature of atoms as revealed in the experiments of modern physics. I don't say that this personal theology is supported or proved by scientific evidence. I only say that it is consistent with scientific evidence.

God , Law , Nature , Universe

“I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Though research done for Wikiquote indicates that the attribution of this remark to Hugo seems extensive on the internet, no source has been identified. It seems to be a statement a modern satirist might make, derived from one made circa 1910 by Mrs Patrick Campbell regarding homosexuals: "Does it really matter what these affectionate people do — so long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses?"
Disputed

Horse

“Music trains the mind, like mathematics, or logic, to precision of mind.”

Guy Gavriel Kay book Tigana

Source: Tigana (1990), Chapter 4 (p. 77)

Music , Mathematics , Training

“He had a feeling that somewhere in the course of her life something had happened to her, something terrible which in the end had given her a great understanding and clarity of mind. He knew, too, almost at once, on the day she had driven up to the door of the cottage, that she had made a discovery about life which he himself had made long since... that there is nothing of such force as the power of a person content merely to be himself, nothing so invincible as the power of simple honesty, nothing so successful as the life of one who runs alone. Somewhere she had learned all this. She was like a woman to whom nothing could ever again happen.”

Louis Bromfield (1896–1956) American author and conservationist

Early Autumn : A Story of a Lady (1926)

Life , Feeling , Understanding , Learning

“Jack: I once had a candidate who was deeply concerned about the moral issues raised by myxomatosis. 'Look mate,' I said, 'Rabbits, as far as I'm aware, haven't yet had the vote.' Mind you, I'm an animal lover, too, you know. I've always advocated that the party that introduced family allowances for dogs would sweep the country. And it'll come, it'll come.”

Dennis Potter (1935–1994) English television dramatist, screenwriter and journalist

Vote, vote, vote for Nigel Barton (1965)

Family , Dogs , Lovers , Animals

“Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.”

E. B. White (1899–1985) American writer

"Some Remarks on Humor," preface to A Subtreasury of American Humor (1941)
A very similar remark is often attributed to White, but may actually be a paraphrased version of the above statement: "Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it."

“From the point of view of the modern neurobiologist, the question whether the mind exists as an autonomous being or is simply a derivative of the coordinated action of the brain cells is unscientific and irrelevant. Regardless of the possibility of an independent existence of the soul, it has no chance to express itself without a functioning brain.”

Jerzy Vetulani (1936–2017) Polish scientist

Vetulani, Jerzy (2008): Mózg i świadomość. Prace Komisji Filozofii Nauk Przyrodniczych PAU. 2/2008, pp. 37–62

Soul , Question , Chance

“There was never any doubt in the minds of the Muslims of their right to spread over the earth… The Hidayah is quite explicit about the legality of jihad (holy war) against infidels even when they have not taken the offensive… The Muslim Turks found the moral justification for their advance into India in the induction to propagate Islam. As this could not, in the opinion of kings and warriors, be achieved without the subjugation of non-Muslims and occupation of their territory, the propagation of Islam became identical with war and conquest.”

Mohammad Mujeeb (1902–1985)

Mohammad Mujeeb, The Indian Muslims (London, 1967), pp.67-68. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1990). Indian muslims: Who are they.

War

“In a time of moral and intellectual anarchy, he handed on the great tradition of faith in the mind and spirit of man.”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

Dean Acheson, former clerk to Justice Brandeis, after Brandeis’s death in 1941.

Faith , Time

“In my opinion, so much of it is really about what you had in mind when you got into it: was it only that you wanted to be a rockstar and see your name in lights? I never really had those kinds of dreams. I knew I loved music and I knew that when I sang in a certain way it made my chest and my whole stomach tickle and I liked it. It still does that same thing to me; I know I’m doing it right when it makes my core tingle a little bit. I get the same feeling when I’m painting a picture or when I get into that almost hypnotic state of writing – those things are incredible and those are the kinds of things that attract me to creativity.”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

When asked about intention for a magazine in Berlin (http://www.pulse-berlin.com/)

Love , Dreams , Music , Way

“Nothing is so much calculated to lead people to forsake sin as to take them by the hand, and watch over them with tenderness. When persons manifest the least kindness and love to me, O what power it has over my mind, while the opposite course has a tendency to harrow up all the harsh feelings and depress the human mind.”

Joseph Smith, Jr. book History of the Church

History of the Church, 5:23–24 (9 June 1842)
1840s

Love , People , Feeling , Personality

“Good fortune will elevate even petty minds, and give them the appearance of a certain greatness and stateliness, as from their high place they look down upon the world; but the truly noble and resolved spirit raises itself, and becomes more conspicuous in times of disaster and ill fortune.”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

Eumenes, sec. 9
Parallel Lives

World , Appearance , Time

“[T]he North’s ideology glorifies the heart over the mind, instincts over consciousness, which makes rash decisions more likely to be made, even quite low down the military command structure. There is therefore a significant danger of some sort of limited clash at any time. But that has always been the case.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with The Conversation (September 2017)

Decision , Time , Heart

“Futurism, as it has developed over six years, has solidified and surpassed Impressionism, has proposed plastic dynamism, atmospheric modeling, and the interpenetration of planes and states of mind.”

Giacomo Balla (1871–1958) Italian artist

The Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe (1915)

Future

“It's true I've got no shirts to wear,
It's true my butcher's bill is due,
It's true my prospects all look blue,
But don't let that unsettle you!
Never you mind!
Roll on!”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

It rolls on.
To the Terrestrial Globe.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Wikipedia is something special. It is like a library or a public park. It is like a temple for the mind. It is a place we can all go to think, to learn, to share our knowledge with others. When I founded Wikipedia, I could have made it into a for-profit company with advertising banners, but I decided to do something different. We’ve worked hard over the years to keep it lean and tight. We fulfill our mission efficiently.”

Jimmy Wales (1966) Wikipedia co-founder and American Internet entrepreneur

Wikimedia donation page https://donate.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LandingPage&country=US&uselang=en&utm_medium=spontaneous&utm_source=fr-redir&utm_campaign=spontaneous&rdfrom=%2F%2Fwikimediafoundation.org%2Fw%2Findex.php%3Ftitle%3DFundraising%26redirect%3Dno.

Knowledge , Thinking , Learning

“I think that the cultivation of the humane letters has the most distinct bearing on the cultivation and appreciation of science. Science is nothing without imagination; and imagination is most readily kept fresh by literature. What little good there is a mere descriptive person, and in the small facts which with painful toil he accumulates. But let these facts be welded together by thought, their bearing traced by imagination, experiments devised by the mind projecting itself in advance of them, and the plodder is likely to become the great discoverer.”

Jacob Mendes Da Costa (1833–1900) American physician

Da Costa, Jacob M. The Higher Professional Life: Valedictory Address to the Graduating Class of Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia. Philadelphia, PA: J.B. Lippincott & Co, 1883.

Pain , Imagination , Literature , Thinking

“Don't suffer! O my body, O my vital, O my mind, O my heart, do not suffer. Do not cherish suffering. Don't act like a fool. Don't think that your suffering is going to accelerate your spiritual progress.”

Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007) Indian writer and guru

Everest Aspiration (1977)

Fools , Thinking , Suffering , Heart

“Sometimes one would almost like to say: what really matters is only the mind. But where can you find a mind without a body?”

Fausto Cercignani (1941) Italian scholar, essayist and poet

Examples of self-translation (c. 2004), Quotes - Zitate - Citations - Citazioni

“The empowered mind gravitates towards freedom and helps you break free of all limitations.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 78

Freedom , Help

“He that will deserve the name of a Christian must be such a man as excelleth through the knowledge of Christ and His doctrine; in modesty and righteousness of mind, in constancy of life, in virtuous fortitude, and in maintaining sincere piety toward the one and the only God, who is all in all.”

Eusebius of Caesarea (265–339) Greek church historian

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 103.

Life , God , Knowledge , Christ

“At that time my heart was all broke
I looked like ashes and smelled like smoke.
And I turned away from my loving kind
Try to leave my body and live in my mind.
But it's much too much emotion
To hold it in your hand.
They've got waves out on the ocean
They're gonna wear away the land.”

James Taylor (1948) American singer-songwriter and guitarist

"Line 'Em Up"
Song lyrics, Hourglass (1997)

Love , Time , Heart

“The good critic is one who tells of his mind's adventures among masterpieces.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Le bon critique est celui qui raconte les aventures de son âme au milieu des chefs-d'œuvre.
Series II : M. Jules Lemaître
The Literary Life (1888-1892)

“Poetry and the arts can’t exist in America. Mere exposure to the arts does nothing for a mentality which is incorrigibly dialectical. The vital tensions and nutritive action of ideogram remain inaccessible to this state of mind.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Letter to Ezra Pound (21 December 1948)
1940s

Art

“No more harmful nonsense exists than [the] common supposition that deepest insight into great questions about the meaning of life or the structure of reality emerges most readily when a free, undisciplined, and uncluttered (read, rather, ignorant and uneducated) mind soars above mere earthly knowledge and concern.”

Stephen Jay Gould book I Have Landed

"No Science Without Fancy, No Art Without Facts", p. 48
I Have Landed (2002)

Life , Question , Knowledge , Reality

“The mind map will change your life.”

Tony Buzan (1942–2019) British psychologist

The Mind Map Book, Buzan and Buzan (1991)

Life , Change

“But never mind, all the best heroines are beautiful orphans, abandoned to their fate, and the one thing that's certain about my situation is that I'm going to be a heroine when I grow up.'
'Can I be a hero?'
'Well, I suppose you can try. But you'll have to try very hard.”

Susan Howatch book The Wheel of Fortune

The Wheel of Fortune (1984), Part 1: Robert

Fate , Beauty

“Enlightenment is not only timeless but also more beautiful, truer, and more indestructible than anything separable or conditioned. There is no greater happiness than the full development of mind!”

Lama Ole Nydahl (1941) Danish lama

Fearless Death: Buddhist Wisdom on the Art of Dying (2012)

Beauty , Happiness

“There are photographers who invent, others who discover. Personally, I am interested in discoveries, not for the trials or experiences but to capture life itself. I flee from the dangers of the anecdote and the picturesque, which are very easy and better than sensational, but quite as bad. To my mind, photography has the power to evoke, and must not simply document. We have to be abstract, just like nature.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) French photographer

Source: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, To Seize Life: Interview with Yvonne Baby (1961), p. 44

Life , Nature , Personality

“Before you have faith you must believe, and before you believe there must be evidence of some sort to persuade the mind. Faith is remembering that evidence and holding to it against all that seems to challenge or contradict it.”

Samuel Youd (1922–2012) British writer

The Prince in Waiting

Faith

“Spirit slumbers in nature, awakens in mind, and finally recognizes itself as Spirit in the transpersonal domains.”

Ken Wilber (1949) American writer and public speaker

A Brief History of Everything (1996)

Nature

“Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord,
Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that;
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a' that:
For a' that, an' a' that,
His ribband, star, an' a' that:
The man o' independent mind
He looks an' laughs at a' that.

A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an' a' that;
But an honest man's abon his might,
Gude faith, he maunna fa' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
Their dignities an' a' that;
The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth,
Are higher rank than a' that.

Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a' that,)
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That Man to Man, the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

A Man's A Man For A' That, st. 3-5 (1795)

World , Faith , Star , Sense

“There was never a more loyal woman in the South after we were forced by our political leaders to go to battle to defend our rights in ownership of African slaves, but they called it "States' Rights," and all I owned was invested in slaves and my people were loyal and I stood by them to the end. Like General Lee I could not fight against my kindred in a struggle that meant life or death to them. Nevertheless I am now too near the borderland of eternity to withhold my matured conscientious and honest opinion. If there had been no slaves there would have been no war. To fight for the perpetuation of domestic slavery was a mistake. The time had come in the United States to wipe out this evil. The South had to suffer, and even when our preachers were leading in prayer for victory, during the war, and black-robed mothers and wives were weeping for their dead ones, who perished on the field of battle, I had questions in my own mind as to what would be the end of it.”

Rebecca Latimer Felton (1835–1930) American politician

From Country Life in Georgia in the Days of My Youth Felton, p. 86 http://www.google.com/books?id=gHsLIvQ_BN0C&dq=rebecca+latimer+felton&printsec=frontcover&source=in#PPA86,M1.

Life , Death , War , People

“This is because all my time is taken up by the war. You should keep in mind that there are times when the rifle is more important than the pen.”

Bai Chongxi (1893–1966) Chinese general

Bai Chongxi cited in " China’s Muslim General http://www.shanghai1937.com/chinas-muslim-general" on Shanghai 1937, 26 February 2013

War , Time

“The only true vision comes not from God but from the inmost recesses of the human mind.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987), Chapter 9.

God

“Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one,
Have oft-times no connexion, Knowledge dwells
in heads replete with thoughts of other men,
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.”

William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book VI, Winter Walk at Noon, Line 88.

Wisdom , Men , Knowledge , Time

“There comes a night when all too late
The mind shall long to prompt the achieving hand,
The eager thought behind closed portals stand,
And the last wishes to the mute lips press
Buried ere death in silent helplessness.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

The Legend of Jubal (1869)

Death , Night

“Among a thousand clouds and ten thousand streams
Here lives an idle man
In the daytime wandering over green mountains
At night coming home to sleep by the cliff
Swiftly springs and autumns pass
But my mind is at peace, clear and free
By now I need nothing to lean on
To be still as the waters of the autumn river”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

Peace , Home , Mountain , Spring

“There are two kinds of geniuses: the ‘ordinary’ and the ‘magicians.’ an ordinary genius is a fellow whom you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what they’ve done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians… Feynman is a magician of the highest caliber.”

Mark Kac (1914–1984) Polish-American mathematician

Mark Kac about Richard Feynman, cited in: Scott D. Tremaine (2011) " John norris Bahcall. 1934–2005. A Biographical Memoir http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/bahcall-john-n.pdf".

Feeling , Understanding , Time

“I think it was a generous thought, and one that fow'd from an exalted mind, that it was not improbable but God might be delighted with the various methods of worshipping him, which divided the whole world.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Letter, February 10, 1715, 16.

God , World , Thinking

“She envied Camille. Camille was a tramp, Mildred thought. And things were so much easier for a tramp. There was no conscience, no sense of loss, nothing but a wonderful, relaxed, stretching-cat selfishness. She could go to bed with anyone she wanted to and never see him again and have no feeling of loss or insecurity about it. That was the way Mildred thought it was with Camille. She wished she could be that way, and she knew she couldn't. Couldn't because of her mother. And the unbidden thought entered her mind—if her mother were only dead Mildred's life would be so much simpler. She could have a secret little place to live somewhere. Almost fiercely, she brushed the thought away. "What a foul thing to think," she said to herself ceremoniously. But it was a dream she often had.”

John Steinbeck book The Wayward Bus

Source: The Wayward Bus (1947), Ch. 13. Mildred is the daughter of Elliot and Bernice Pritchard.

Life , Secret , Dreams , Way

“It has been my experience that a bi-product of order is preparedness. And if chance favors the prepared mind, then I am ready!”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 16

Chance

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did.”

T. E. Lawrence book Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Introductory Chapter. Variant: This, therefore, is a faded dream of the time when I went down into the dust and noise of the Eastern market-place, and with my brain and muscles, with sweat and constant thinking, made others see my visions coming true. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible.
Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922)

Men , Dreams , Night

“Do not hover always on the surface of things, nor take up suddenly with mere appearances; but penetrate into the depth of matters, as far as your time and circumstances allow, especially in those things which relate to your own profession. Do not indulge yourselves to judge of things by the first glimpse, or a short and superficial view of them; for this will fill the mind with errors and prejudices, and give it a wrong turn and ill habit of thinking, and make much work for retraction.”

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English hymnwriter, theologian and logician

(1727), Ch. I, General Rules for the Improvement of Knowlege, Rule VII -
1720s, The Improvement of the Mind (1727)

Error , Thinking , Appearance , Time

“Do you think that a monk is your sweeper who will keep sweeping your mind for you day after day? He may clean your mind once; after that it is up to you to keep it clean. If you don't have any motivation, what can a monk do? Can a holy man erase your past impressions, or do you think he will carry you to the Lord on his shoulders? He will show you the path, but you will have to walk it yourself. That is the only way to reach God.”

Swami Adbhutananda Disciple

Source: God Lived with Them, p.432

God , Way , Motivation , Thinking

Quotes about mind page 39

Quotes about mind
page 39