Quotes about mind
page 42

Piet Mondrian photo
Seneca the Younger photo

“That is why we give to children a proverb, or that which the Greeks call Chreia, to be learned by heart; that sort of thing can be comprehended by the young mind, which cannot as yet hold more. For a man, however, whose progress is definite, to chase after choice extracts and to prop his weakness by the best known and the briefest sayings and to depend upon his memory, is disgraceful; it is time for him to lean on himself. He should make such maxims and not memorize them. For it is disgraceful even for an old man, or one who has sighted old age, to have a note-book knowledge. "This is what Zeno said." But what have you yourself said? "This is the opinion of Cleanthes." But what is your own opinion? How long shall you march under another man's orders? Take command, and utter some word which posterity will remember. Put forth something from your own stock.”
Ideo pueris et sententias ediscendas damus et has quas Graeci chrias vocant, quia complecti illas puerilis animus potest, qui plus adhuc non capit. Certi profectus viro captare flosculos turpe est et fulcire se notissimis ac paucissimis vocibus et memoria stare: sibi iam innitatur. Dicat ista, non teneat; turpe est enim seni aut prospicienti senectutem ex commentario sapere. 'Hoc Zenon dixit': tu quid? 'Hoc Cleanthes': tu quid? Quousque sub alio moveris? impera et dic quod memoriae tradatur, aliquid et de tuo profer.

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

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XXXIII

Tom Robbins photo
John Maynard Keynes photo

“His peculiar gift was the power of holding continuously in his mind a purely mental problem until he had seen it through.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

On Isaac Newton
Essays In Biography (1933), Newton, the Man

Michel De Montaigne photo
Emma Goldman photo
David Cronenberg photo
Lee Kuan Yew photo
Gerhard Richter photo
Walker Percy photo
Malcolm Muggeridge photo
Jerry Fodor photo
Ramana Maharshi photo
Nisargadatta Maharaj photo

“(…)The body-mind is like a room. It is there, but I need not live in it all the time.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Body
Source: I am That, P.153.

Oliver Lodge photo
John Wesley photo

“As to the word itself, it is generally allowed to be of Greek extraction. But whence the Greek word, enthousiasmos, is derived, none has yet been able to show. Some have endeavoured to derive it from en theoi, in God; because all enthusiasm has reference to him. … It is not improbable, that one reason why this uncouth word has been retained in so many languages was, because men were not better agreed concerning the meaning than concerning the derivation of it. They therefore adopted the Greek word, because they did not understand it: they did not translate it into their own tongues, because they knew not how to translate it; it having been always a word of a loose, uncertain sense, to which no determinate meaning was affixed.
It is not, therefore, at all surprising, that it is so variously taken at this day; different persons understanding it in different senses, quite inconsistent with each other. Some take it in a good sense, for a divine impulse or impression, superior to all the natural faculties, and suspending, for the time, either in whole or in part, both the reason and the outward senses. In this meaning of the word, both the Prophets of old, and the Apostles, were proper enthusiasts; being, at divers times, so filled with the Spirit, and so influenced by Him who dwelt in their hearts, that the exercise of their own reason, their senses, and all their natural faculties, being suspended, they were wholly actuated by the power of God, and “spake” only “as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.”
Others take the word in an indifferent sense, such as is neither morally good nor evil: thus they speak of the enthusiasm of the poets; of Homer and Virgil in particular. And this a late eminent writer extends so far as to assert, there is no man excellent in his profession, whatsoever it be, who has not in his temper a strong tincture of enthusiasm. By enthusiasm these appear to understand, all uncommon vigour of thought, a peculiar fervour of spirit, a vivacity and strength not to be found in common men; elevating the soul to greater and higher things than cool reason could have attained.
But neither of these is the sense wherein the word “enthusiasm” is most usually understood. The generality of men, if no farther agreed, at least agree thus far concerning it, that it is something evil: and this is plainly the sentiment of all those who call the religion of the heart “enthusiasm.” Accordingly, I shall take it in the following pages, as an evil; a misfortune, if not a fault. As to the nature of enthusiasm, it is, undoubtedly a disorder of the mind; and such a disorder as greatly hinders the exercise of reason. Nay, sometimes it wholly sets it aside: it not only dims but shuts the eyes of the understanding. It may, therefore, well be accounted a species of madness; of madness rather than of folly: seeing a fool is properly one who draws wrong conclusions from right premisses; whereas a madman draws right conclusions, but from wrong premisses. And so does an enthusiast suppose his premisses true, and his conclusions would necessarily follow. But here lies his mistake: his premisses are false. He imagines himself to be what he is not: and therefore, setting out wrong, the farther he goes, the more he wanders out of the way.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

Sermon 37 "The Nature of Enthusiasm"
Sermons on Several Occasions (1771)

John Jay photo
Francis Bacon photo
Cora L. V. Scott photo
Jeane Kirkpatrick photo

“Neither nature, experience, nor probability informs these lists of 'entitlements', which are subject to no constraints except those of the mind and appetite of their authors.”

Jeane Kirkpatrick (1926–2006) American diplomat and Presidential advisor

Legitimacy and Force (1988), 130.
Jeane Kirkpatrick talking about a report of the Human Rights Commission in Geneva, which she termed "a letter to Santa Claus." as in A Human Rights Approach to Food and Nutrition Policies and Programmes by Peter L. Pellett http://www.unsystem.org/SCN/archives/scnnews18/ch06.htm, who quotes The Hypocrisy Of It All by Noam Chomsky (1999) http://www.middleeast.org/archives/1999_01_25.htm

Mickey Spillane photo
Michael Bloomberg photo
Edward Bellamy photo
Will Eisner photo
Benjamin Peirce photo
A. P. Herbert photo
Hugh Blair photo

“Anxiety is the poison of human life; the parent of many sins and of more miseries. – In a world where everything is doubtful, and where we may be disappointed, and be blessed in disappointment, why this restless stir and commotion of mind? – Can it alter the cause, or unravel the mystery of human events?”

Hugh Blair (1718–1800) British philosopher

Quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern, https://books.google.com/books?id=zlMxAAAAIAAJ ed. Tryon Edwards, F. B. Dickerson Company (1908), p. 23.

William Pitt the Younger photo
Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV photo

“I recall to mind on this occasion, said His Highness, "the words which I spoke nearly 21 years ago when I opened the Representative Assembly in person for the first time after I assumed the reins of Government. The hopes I then expressed of the value of the yearly gatherings of the Assembly in contributing to the well-being and contentment of my subjects have been amply fulfilled. The Legislative Council, too, which came into existence in 1907.”

Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV (1884–1940) King of Mysore

At the Inauguration of the Reformed Legislative Council and the Representative Assembly on the 17th March 1924 Modern_Mysore, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Open University, 26 November 2013, archive.org, 330-32 http://archive.org/stream/modernmysore035292mbp/modernmysore035292mbp_djvu.txt,
As ruler of the state

John Oldham (poet) photo

“Curse on the man who business first designed,
And by't enthralled a freeborn lover's mind!”

John Oldham (poet) (1653–1683) English satirical poet and translator

Complaining of Absence, 11; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).

“A country cannot be defeated politically unless it is defeated culturally. Our alien rulers knew that they could not conquer India without conquering Hinduism - cultural India's name at its deepest and highest, and the principle of its identity, continuity and reawakening. Therefore Hinduism became an object of their special attack. Physical attack was supplemented by ideological attack. They began to interpret for us our history, our religion, our culture and ourselves. We learnt to look at us through their eyes…. The long period created an atmosphere of mental slavery and imitation. It created a class of people Hindu in their names and by birth but anti-Hindu in orientation, sympathy and loyalty. They knew all the bad things and nothing good about Hinduism. Hindu dharma is now being subverted from within. Anti-Hindu Hindus are very important today; they rule the roost; they write our histories, they define our nation; they control the media, the academia, the politics, the higher administration and higher courts. They are now working as clients of those forces who are planning to revive their old Imperialism… During this period our minds became soft. We became escapists; we wanted to avoid conflict at any cost, even conflict and controversy of ideas, even when this controversy was necessary. We developed an escape-route. We called it "synthesis". We said all religions, all scriptures, all prophets preach the same things. It was intellectual surrender, and our enemies saw it that way; they concluded that we are amenable to anything, that we would clutch at any false hope or idea to avoid a struggle, and that we would do nothing to defend ourselves. Therefore, they have become even more aggressive. It also shows that we have lost spiritual discrimination (viveka), and would entertain any falsehood; this is prajñâ-dosha, drishti-dosha, and it cannot be good for our survival in the long run. People first fall into delusion before they fall into misfortune.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

On Hinduism (2000)

John Lancaster Spalding photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Rene Balcer photo
Camille Paglia photo
Rukmini Devi Arundale photo

“Dance was really the art of the temple and that her temple theater was built with that purpose in mind. It has many features of the temple, and we have adopted as much as possible all the ideals enshrined in Natyashastra.”

Rukmini Devi Arundale (1904–1986) Indian Bharatnatyam dancer

On her "Kootahmabalam temple theater" set up in her hundred acre Kalakshetra, quoted in "Rukmini Devi Arundale, 1904-1986: A Visionary Architect of Indian Culture and the Performing Arts", page 14

George Santayana photo

“To the mind of the ancients, who knew something of such matters, liberty and prosperity seemed hardly compatible, yet modern liberalism wants them together.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

"The Irony of Liberalism"
Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922)

Marie-Louise von Franz photo
Gerard Manley Hopkins photo

“My own heart let me have more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

" My own heart let me have more have pity on http://www.bartleby.com/122/47.html", lines 1-4
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Bram van Velde photo

“Mondrian? His mind was too subtle. He worked in the light. I work in the darkness... Mondrian is the Buddha of painting. I saw him once. You wondered how a man could radiate such charisma.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

2 April 1967; p. 62
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

Carl Panzram photo
Shamini Flint photo
Roy Jenkins photo

“Undoubtedly, looking back, we nearly all allowed ourselves, for decades, to be frozen into rates of personal taxation which were ludicrously high… That frozen framework has been decisively cracked, not only by the prescripts of Chancellors but in the expectations of the people. It is one of the things for which the Government deserve credit… However, even beneficial revolutions have a strong tendency to breed their own excesses. There is now a real danger of the conventional wisdom about taxation, public expenditure and the duty of the state in relation to the distribution of rewards, swinging much too far in the opposite direction… I put in a strong reservation against the view, gaining ground a little dangerously I think, that the supreme duty of statesmanship is to reduce taxation. There is certainly no virtue in taxation for its own sake… We have been building up, not dissipating, overseas assets. The question is whether, while so doing, we have been neglecting our investment at home and particularly that in the public services. There is no doubt, in my mind at any rate, about the ability of a low taxation market-oriented economy to produce consumer goods, even if an awful lot of them are imported, far better than any planned economy that ever was or probably ever can be invented. However, I am not convinced that such a society and economy, particularly if it is not infused with the civic optimism which was in many ways the true epitome of Victorian values, is equally good at protecting the environment or safeguarding health, schools, universities or Britain's scientific future. And if we are asked which is under greater threat in Britain today—the supply of consumer goods or the nexus of civilised public services—it would be difficult not to answer that it was the latter.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1988/feb/24/opportunity-and-income-social-disparities in the House of Lords (24 February 1988).

Charles Cooley photo

“The social self is simply any idea, or system of ideas, drawn from the communicative life, that the mind cherishes as its own.”

Charles Cooley (1864–1929) American sociologist

Source: Human Nature and the Social Order, 1902, p. 17

Grace Aguilar photo
Gautama Buddha photo

“Whatever an enemy might do to an enemy, or a foe to a foe, the ill-directed mind can do to you even worse.
Whatever a mother, father or other kinsman might do for you, the well-directed mind can do for you even better.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

Pali Canon 42-43 Cittavagga The Mind http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/dhp.03.than.html.
Unclassified

Robert A. Heinlein photo

“He’ll pay no mind to me anyhow,” MacRae answered. “That’s the healthy thing about kids.”

Source: Red Planet (1949), Chapter 9, “Politics”, p. 133

Henri Poincaré photo
Peter T. King photo

“Ann Coulter has become a legend in her own mind.”

Peter T. King (1944) American politician

as quoted in Soulless: Ann Coulter and the Right-Wing Church of Hate (2006) by Susan Estrich, p. 71.

B.K.S. Iyengar photo
Bill Hicks photo
Paul Cézanne photo

“To my mind one does not put oneself in place of the past, one only adds a new link.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Quote of 1906 from a letter; cited in Paul Cézanne, Letters ed. John Rewald, New York, Da Capro Press, 1995, p. 313
Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900

Arthur C. Clarke photo
Emil M. Cioran photo
Paula Modersohn-Becker photo
Robert Graves photo
U Thant photo

“Wars begin in the minds of men, and in those minds, love and compassion would have built the defenses of peace.”

U Thant (1909–1974) 3rd Secretary-General of the United Nations

"Buddhism and the Charter" in Religion and International Affairs (1968) edited by Jeffrey Rose and Michael Ignatieff, p. 114

John Stuart Mill photo
China Miéville photo
Daniel Dennett photo
Thornton Wilder photo

“I hold that we cannot be said to be aware of our minds save under responsibility.”

The Ides of March (1948), sec. VIII, item 977, p. 34 http://books.google.com/books?id=8IgRAAAAMAAJ&q=%22I+hold+that+we+cannot+be+said+to+be+aware+of+our+minds+save+under+responsibility%22&pg=PA34#v=onepage

“It is not so much tutoring that the minds needs, but clearer recognition and better use of what it already knows.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 92

Georgia O'Keeffe photo
Margaret Mead photo
Hoyt Axton photo
Robert Louis Stevenson photo

“Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.”

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer

'La Fère of Cursed Memory', 15th vignette of An Inland Voyage (1878), in Collected Memoirs, Travel Sketches and Island Literature of Robert Louis Stevenson https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/8026833953, Stevenson, e-artnow (2015)

Francesco Berni photo

“Ere now a simple tiller of the soil
Hath spoken words of wisdom to mankind;
A cloak all tattered and besmirched with toil
Hath ofttimes clothed a man of prudent mind.”

Francesco Berni (1497–1535) Italian poet

Ha qualche volta un ortolan parlato
Cose molte a proposito a la gente;
E da un mantel rotto e sporco e stato
Molte volte coperto un uom prudente.
LVIII, 1
Rifacimento of Orlando Innamorato

Homér photo

“There can be no covenants between men and lions, wolves and lambs can never be of one mind.”

XXII. 262–263 (tr. Samuel Butler); Achilles to Hector.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

Jean de La Bruyère photo
Philip Melanchthon photo
Marc Chagall photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Ilana Mercer photo

“President Trump is too set in his ways and independent-minded to imbibe the layers of debased semiotics with which government lawyers routinely rape reality.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Trump Fends Off 'Showboat' Comey And The Federal Zombies," http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/06/trump_fends_off_showboat_comey_and_the_federal_zombies.html The American Thinker, June 9, 2017.
2010s, 2017

William Morris photo
Park Chung-hee photo

“Like a Long Magnolia Blossom Bending to the Wind. Under heavy silence. Of a house in mourning. Only the cry of cicadas. Ma'am, ma'am, ma'am. Seem to long for you who is now gone. Under the August sun. The Indian Lilacs turn crimson. As if trying to heal the wounds of the mind. My wife has departed alone. Only I am left. Like a lone magnolia blossom bending to the wind. Where can I appeal. The sadness of a broken heart.”

Park Chung-hee (1917–1979) Korean Army general and the leader of South Korea from 1961 to 1979

Poem (August 1974), as quoted in Brothers at War: The Unending Conflict in Korea https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9781846680670 (2013), by Sheila Miyoshi Jager, London: Profile Books, p. 414.
1970s

Aron Ra photo

“There are basically two types of creationists; the professional or political creationists; these are the activists who lead the movement and who will regularly deliberately lie to promote their propaganda; and the second type which are the innocently-deceived followers commonly known as “sheep”. I know lots of intellectual Christians, but I can’t get any of them to actually watch the televangelists, because they either already know how phony they are, or they don’t want to find out. But that only allows a radical fringe to claim support from they masses they now also claim to represent. So there’s nothing to stop them. Professional creationists are making money hand over fist with faith-healing scams or bilking little old ladies out of prayer donations, or selling books and videos at their circus-like seminars where they have undeserved respect as powerful leaders. All of them feign knowledge they can’t really possess, and some of them claim degrees they’ve never actually earned… Were it not for this con, they’d have to go back to selling used cars, wonder drugs, and multi-level marketing schemes. They will never change their minds no matter what it costs anyone else.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"1st Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnJX68ELbAY, Youtube (November 11, 2007)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Lawrence Durrell photo
Walter Rauschenbusch photo
Thomas Fuller (writer) photo
Piet Hein photo
Lin Yutang photo
John Ruysbroeck photo

“And there you In a new embrace, with a new torrent of eternal love: all the elect, angels and men, from the last to the first are embraced It is a living and fruitful unity, which is the source and the fount of all life All creatures are there without themselves as in their eternal origin, One essence and one life with God These enlightened people are lifted up with free mind above reason…To the summit of their spirit Their naked understanding is penetrated with eternal clarity as the air is penetrated by the light of the sun. The bare elevated will is transformed and penetrated with fathomless love, just as iron is penetrated by the fire [God] gives Himself in the soul’s essence…Where the soul’s powers are unified…And undergo God’s transformation in simplicity. In this place all is full and overflowing, for the spirit feels itself as one truth and one richness. And one unity with God All spirits thus raised up Melt away and are annihilated by reason of enjoyment in God’s essence They fall away from themselves and are lost in a bottomless unknowingWith God they will ebb and flow, and will always be in repose…They are drunk with love and have passed away into God in a dark luminosity must accept that the Persons yield and lose themselves whirling in essential love, that is, in enjoyable unity; nevertheless, they always remain according to their personal properties In the working of the Trinity. You may thus understand that the divine nature is eternally at rest and without mode according to the simplicity of its essence. It is why all that God has chosen and enfolded with eternal personal love, he has possessed essentially, enjoyably in unity, with essential love.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Little Book of Enlightenment (c. 1364)

R. A. Lafferty photo
Francis Bacon photo
Robert Charles Wilson photo