Quotes about mind
page 61

“By drawing our senses of perception inward, we are able to experience the control, silence, and quietness of the mind. This ability to still and gently silence the mind is essential, not only for meditation and the inward journey but also so that the intuitive intelligence can function usefully and in a worthwhile manner in the external world.”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 12-13

World, Intelligence, Sense, Silence

“The mind understands something only insofar as it absorbs it like a seed into itself, nurtures it, and lets it grow into blossom and fruit. Therefore scatter holy seeds into the soil of the spirit.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

“Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 5

Understanding

“All my early memories are of forms and shapes and textures. Moving through and over the West Riding landscape with my father in his car, the hills were sculptures; the roads defined the forms. Above all, there was the sensation of moving physically over the contours of foulnesses and concavities, through hollows and over peaks – feeling, touching, seeing, through mind and hand and eye. This sensation has never left me. I, the sculptor, am the landscape. I am the form and I am the hollow, the thrust and the contour.”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

Source: 1961 - 1975, Barbara Hepworth, A Pictorial autobiography', 1970, p. 280

Cars, Feeling, Memory

“In our first settlement in Missouri, it was said by our enemies that we intended to tamper with the slaves, not that we had any idea of the kind, for such a thing never entered our minds. We knew that the children of Ham were to be the "servant of servants," and no power under heaven could hinder it, so long as the Lord would permit them to welter under the curse and those were known to be our religious views concerning them.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses, vol. 2, 1863, p. 172.
1860s

Children, Idea

“It was a queer, disturbing instant of recognition. We all create monsters in our minds. The only important difference may be which of us let our monsters become real.”

David Brin book Earth

Part III (pp. 145-146)
Earth (1990)

“In that temple of silence and reconciliation where the enmities of twenty generations lie buried, in the great Abbey which has during many ages afforded a quiet resting-place to those whose minds and bodies have been shattered by the contentions of the Great Hall.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

On Warren Hastings (1841)

Lie, Age, Silence

“Were I to deduce any system from my feelings on leaving Eton, it might be called The Theory of Permanent Adolescence. It is the theory that the experiences undergone by boys at the great public schools, their glories and disappointments, are so intense as to dominate their lives and arrest their development. From these it results that the greater part of the ruling class remains adolescent, school-minded, self-conscious, cowardly, sentimental, and in the last analysis homosexual.”

Cyril Connolly book Enemies of Promise

Source: Enemies of Promise (1938), Part 3: A Georgian Boyhood, Ch. 24: Vale (p. 253)

School, Disappointment, Feeling, Boy

“Many decry the loss of “real time” to capturing moments on-screen, claiming that the recording of memories as they happen threatens to replace the actual memories you have of that moment. I’ve read many articles in which parents bemoan the fact their kids were seeing family vacations through GoPro cameras, rather than actually living them. After a day on the ski slopes, they edit their raw footage into action-packed greatest moments and post it to social media, where it’s shared and commented on by their friends, hyperextending their time on the mountain. For a generation raised on reality TV to be able to replay those moments over and over through a mediated interface is a way of reliving an eternal present, loved for a moment then replaced by the next day’s upload. In this way, we’re simultaneously archiving and forgetting: archiving because we continuously upload media, and forgetting because we rarely go back to visit what we have uploaded. Today’s upload is the best upload and keeps us very much present and mindful in the here and now.”

Kenneth Goldsmith (1961) American writer

Wasting Time on the Internet, 2016

Love, Family, Way, Mountain

“Money is the great weapon in a free, equal and competitive society, which skill and capital employ in the war of the wits, to exploitate and oppress the poor, the improvident, and the weak-minded. Its evil effects are greatly aggravated by the credit and banking systems.”

George Fitzhugh (1806–1881) American activist

Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), p. 303

Money, War, Evil

“Wine is wont to show the mind of man.”

Theognis of Megara (-570–-485 BC) Greek lyric poet active in approximately the sixth century BC

Source: Elegies, Line 500.

Wine

“The sweet converse of an innocent mind.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Sonnet, To Solitude; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“We're led by a man that either is not tough, not smart, or he's got something else in mind. And the something else in mind, you know, people can't believe it, people cannot believe that President Obama is acting the way he acts and can't even mention the words 'radical Islamic terrorism. There's something going on — it's inconceivable. There's something going on. He doesn't get it, or he gets it better than anybody understands. It's one or the other, and either one is unacceptable.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Phone interview on "Fox and Friends", as quoted in "Trump on Obama and Islam: 'There's something going on'" http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/283246-trump-on-obama-and-islam-theres-something-going-on by Jesse Byrnes, The Hill (13 June 2016) <br class="br">2010s, 2016, June

People, Way, Understanding

“It is the historical mind, rather than the scientific (in the physicist's sense), that destroyed the mythical orientation of European culture; the historian, not the mathematician, introduced the "higher criticism," the standard of actual fact. It is he who is the real apostle of the realistic age. Science builds its structure of hypothetical "elements" and laws of their behavior, touching on reality at crucial points.... But the historian does not locate known facts in a hypothetical, general pattern of processes; his aim is to link fact to fact, one unique knowable event to another individual one that begot it.”

Susanne K. Langer book Philosophy in a New Key

Philosophy in a New Key (1941)

Age, Law, Behavior, Reality

“Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Mere Christianity

Book III, Chapter 8, "The Great Sin"
Mere Christianity (1952)

God

“We do not completely love those at whom we cannot smile. There is something inhuman in absolute perfection which overwhelms the mind and heart, which commands respect, but keeps friendship at a distance through discouragement and humiliation. We are always glad when a great man reassures us of his humanity by possessing a few peculiarities.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Friendship

Love, Friendship, Smile, Heart

“As shorthand, when the phenomena are suitably simple, words such as equilibrium and stability are of great value and convenience. Nevertheless, it should be always borne in mind that they are mere shorthand, and that the phenomena will not always have the simplicity that these words presuppose.”

W. Ross Ashby (1903–1972) British psychiatrist

Source: An Introduction to Cybernetics (1956), Part I: Mechanism, p. 85

“Never could I interest myself in a book if it were not the exact diet my mind required at the time, or in the very immediate future. The mind asked, received, and digested. So much was assimilated, so much expelled; then, after a season, similar demands were made, the same processes were repeated out of sight, below consciousness, as is the case in a well-ordered stomach.”

George Moore (novelist) (1852–1933) Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist

Source: Confessions of a Young Man http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12278/12278-h/12278-h.htm (1886), Ch. 2.

Books, Time, Future, Season

“Every creature, every work of God, is admirably well made; but if any one appears imperfect in our eyes, it does not belong to us to criticise it. Perhaps that which we do not find right in its kind, turns to our advantage, without our being able to perceive it. Let us look at the state of the heavens, one while the sun shines, another time it does not appear; now the weather is fine; again it is unpleasant; one day is hot, another is cold; another time it is rainy, snowy or cloudy; every thing is variable and inconstant. Let us look at the surface of the earth: here the ground is flat; there it is hilly and mountainous; in other places it is sandy; in others it is barren; and elsewhere it is productive. Let us, in thought, go into an orchard or forest. What do we see? Trees high or low, large or small, upright or crooked, fruitful or unfruitful. Let us look at the birds of the air, and at the fishes of the sea, nothing resembles another thing. Let us look at the beasts. We see among the same kinds some of different forms, of different dimensions, domestic or wild, harmless or ferocious, useful or useless, pleasing or hideous. Some are bred for men's sakes; some for their own pleasures and amusements; some are of no use to us. There are faults in their organization as well as in that of men. Those who are acquainted with the veterinary art, know this well; but as for us who have not made a study of this science, we seem not to discover or remark these faults. Let us now come to ourselves. Our intellectual faculties as well as our corporeal organization have their imperfections. There are faculties both of the mind and heart, which education improve; there are others which it does not correct. I class in this number, idiotism, imbecility, dulness. But nothing can correct the infirmities of the bodily organization, such as deafness, blindness, lameness, palsy, crookedness, ugliness. The sight of a beautiful person does not make another so likewise, a blind person does not render another blind. Why then should a deaf person make others so also? Why are we Deaf and Dumb? Is it from the difference of our ears? But our ears are like yours; is it that there may be some infirmity? But they are as well organized as yours. Why then are we Deaf and Dumb? I do not know, as you do not know why there are infirmities in your bodies, nor why there are among the human kind, white, black, red and yellow men. The Deaf and Dumb are everywhere, in Asia, in Africa, as well as in Europe and America. They existed before you spoke of them and before you saw them.”

Laurent Clerc (1785–1869) French-American deaf educator

Statement of 1818, quoted in Through Deaf Eyes: A Photographic History of an American Community (2007) by Douglas C. Baynton, Jack R. Gannon, and Jean Lindquist Bergey

Men, God, Pleasure, Education

“There were women in the golden age of Greece, called hetaerae, who were celebrated by Socrates and philosophers of his time. Although they existed solely for their own pleasure and that of men, they were respected for their independence of mind and spirit and thought of highly by the Greeks. Single women in today's world can function like hetaerae, learning from many and giving back to whom they will, and for the woman who enjoys such a life, it can be a good one, and one both she and society can be the better for.”

Merle Shain (1935–1989) Canadian writer

Some Men are More Perfect Than Others (1973)

Life, Women, Men, Pleasure

“Here let us feast, and to the feast be joined
Discourse, the sweeter banquet of the mind;
Review the series of our lives, and taste
The melancholy joy of evils passed:
For he who much has suffered, much will know,
And pleased remembrance builds delight on woe.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

XV. 398–401 (tr. Alexander Pope).
E. V. Rieu's translation:
: Meanwhile let us two, here in the hut, over our food and wine, regale ourselves with the unhappy memories that each can recall. For a man who has been through bitter experiences and travelled far can enjoy even his sufferings after a time.
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

Suffering, Evil, Joy

“Donald Trump should be given the Medal of Freedom for speaking his mind in such a bold, honest and straight-forward manner.”

Ted Nugent (1948) American rock musician

Give Trump the Medal of Freedom (August 7, 2015)
Source: https://www.factcheck.org/2018/09/shaq-didnt-call-trump-the-best-president/

Freedom

“I feel like when I work that is my time to express myself and to be creative and to really delve into somebody else’s mind, heart and psyche. That is my thing.”

Gwyneth Paltrow (1972) American actress, singer, and food writer

Interview with ShowBizSpy. http://web.archive.org/web/20091008013808/http://www.showbizspy.com/article/192774/gwyneth-paltrow-i-dont-care-that-my-kids-cant-watch-my-films.html (5 October 2009)

Feeling, Time, Heart

“It is a strange and dismal thing that in a world of such need, such opportunity and such variety as ours, the search for an illusory peace of mind should go so zealously pursued and defended, while truth goes languishing.”

Karl Menninger (1893–1990) American psychiatrist

The Week (October 16, 1958)

Truth, World, Peace, Search

“A man's mind will very generally refuse to make itself up until it be driven and compelled by emergency.”

Anthony Trollope book Ayala's Angel

Ayala's Angel (1881), Ch. 41

“But no - what’s this? The branch on which he is sitting is weak. That is not all: wood-mice are gnawing away at it: before long they will eat through it and it will snap and fall. The branch sags down over a well. Aha! Escape! Perhaps our hero can swim? But the well is dry and there are snakes writhing and hissing on its bed. As the branch bends lower, he perceives a solitary blade of grass on wall of well. On top of the blade of grass gleams a drop of honey. What is our hero to do? What action does our puranic man quintessential Indian, take in the situation? He bends with the branch and licks up the honey…. What did you expect? Some neat solution to the problem? The tiger changes its mind and goes away? Amitabh Bachchan leaps to the rescue? Don’t be silly. One strength of Indian mind is that it knows some problems cannot be resolved and it learns to make best of them. That is the Indian answer to the insuperable difficulty. One does not fight against that by which one is certain to be overwhelmed; but one finds the best way, for oneself, to live with it. This is our national aesthetic. Without it, india as we know it could not survive.”

Shashi Tharoor book The Great Indian Novel

The Great Indian Novel (1989)

Way, Problem, Grass, Learning

“Jack: You'll have to compromise, smile, concern yourself with your public image, measure your words as carefully as possible… and turn yourself into a dutiful party hack! [chuckles] Never mind, Nigel, never mind.”

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

Jack Hay was based on Ron Brewer, who had been Potter's agent when he was Labour candidate for East Hertfordshire in the 1964 general election.
Vote, vote, vote for Nigel Barton (1965)

Smile

“The Philosopher of this age is not a Socrates, a Plato, a Hooker, or Taylor, who inculcates on men the necessity and infinite worth of moral goodness, the great truth that our happiness depends on the mind which is within us, and not on the circumstances which are without us; but a Smith, a De Lolme, a Bentham, who chiefly inculcates the reverse of this,—that our happiness depends entirely on external circumstances; nay, that the strength and dignity of the mind within us is itself the creature and consequence of these. Were the laws, the government, in good order, all were well with us; the rest would care for itself! Dissentients from this opinion, expressed or implied, are now rarely to be met with; widely and angrily as men differ in its application, the principle is admitted by all.”

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

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

Men, Happiness, Truth, Age

“His name was William Saroyan. He was the first writer I fell in love with, boyishly in love. I was held by his unaffected voice, his sentimentality, his defiant individualism. I found myself in the stories he told… I learned from Saroyan that you do not have to live in some great city — in New York or Paris — in order to write… When I was a student at Stanford, a generation ago, the name of William Saroyan was never mentioned by any professor in the English Department. William Saroyan apparently was not considered a major American talent. Instead, we undergraduates set about the business of psychoanalyzing Hamlet and deconstructing Lolita. In my mind Saroyan belongs with John Steinbeck, a fellow small town Californian and of the same generation. He belongs with Thornton Wilder, with those writers whose aching love of America was formed by the Depression and the shadow of war. … Saroyan's prose is as plain as it is strong. He talks about the pleasure of drinking water from a hose on a summer afternoon in California's Central Valley, and he holds you with the pure line. My favorite is his novel The Human Comedy… In 1943, The Human Comedy became an MGM movie starring Mickey Rooney, but I always imagined Homer Macaulay as a darker, more soulful boy, someone who looked very much like a young William Saroyan…”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

"Time Of Our Lives" (26 May 1997) http://www.cilicia.com/armo22_william_saroyan_6.html

Love, War, Pleasure, Soul

“It might pertinently be said that determinism and freedom are of course compatible enough when they are merely viewed as the two reciprocal aspects of self-activity in a single mind, but that the real difficulty is to reconcile the self-determinisms in different free minds.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Harmony of Determinism and Freedom, p.326-7

Freedom

“The discontinuation of bodily exercises afforded a proportionable quantity of leisure time for the cultivation of the mind; so that the manners of mankind were softened by degrees, and learning, which had been so long neglected, became fashionable, and was esteemed an indispensable mark of a polite education.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. xxxii
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Education

Education, Exercises, Fashion, Learning

“To desire and strive to be of some service to the world, to aim at doing something which shall really increase the happiness and welfare and virtue of mankind,—this is a choice which is possible for all of us; and surely it is a good haven to sail for. The more we think of it, the more attractive and desirable it becomes. To do some work that is needed, and to do it thoroughly well; to make our toil count for something in adding to the sum total of what is actually profitable for humanity; to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before, or, better still, to make one wholesome idea take root in a mind that was bare and fallow; to make our example count for something on the side of honesty and cheerfulness, and courage, and good faith, and love - this is an aim for life which is very wide, and yet very definite, as clear as light. It is not in the least vague. It is only free; it has the power to embody itself in a thousand forms without changing its character. Those who seek it know what it means, however it may be expressed. It is real and genuine and satisfying. There is nothing beyond it, because there can be no higher practical result of effort. It is the translation, through many languages, of the true, divine purpose of all the work and labor that is done beneath the sun, into one final, universal word. It is the active consciousness of personal harmony with the will of God who worketh hitherto.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

Source: Ships and Havens https://archive.org/stream/shipshavens00vand#page/28/mode/2up/search/more+we+think+of+it (1897), p.27

Love, Life, God, Happiness

“The first colours which made a strong impression on me were light juice green, white, crimson red, black and yellow ocher. These memories go back to the third year of my life. I saw these colours on various objects [houses and roofs, in Russia] which are not as clear in my mind as the colours themselves.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Source: 1916 -1920, Autobiography', 1918, p. 9

Life, Light, Strong, Memory

“I didn't even know that chickens could fly, and suddenly one was landing on me. It happened when I was visiting a farm sanctuary. If I had been younger I would have asked my parents if I could take her home, please! After all, she chose me. Never mind that she chose everybody; she was a particularly friendly chicken. She made soft, strange cooing sounds and nestled into my arms like a happy kitten. … In fact she was an ordinary chicken, but simply one who had no reason to believe that people were after her. This is how chickens and humans would relate to one another if one was not exploited and the other doing the exploiting. Very much like cats and dogs. They just wait for the chance.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

Source: The Pig Who Sang to the Moon (2003), Ch. 2, p. 57

Happiness, People, Dogs, Home

“Young people are not yet biased in their mind. They are not completely taken by their expert opinions. Expert opinions have a difficulty to go beyond of what they know. When you start in a new field, from the point of view of a scientist, you certainly are 20 years younger, because in the new field you're not yet biased and you look at certain things a little bit more relaxed and a little bit more open.”

Heinrich Rohrer (1933–2013) Swiss physicist

Interview with Heinrich Rohrer at the Nobel Foundation, Stockholm, 9 April, 2008. The interviewer is Adam Smith, Editor-in-Chief of Nobelprize.org.

People

“In tracking down and eliminating terrorists, we need to change our metaphor from a "war on terror" — exactly what, pray tell, is that? — to the mind-set of Interpol tracking down master criminals through intense global cooperation among nations, or the FBI stalking the Mafia, or local police determined to quell street gangs without leveling the entire neighborhood in the process.”

Bill Moyers (1934) American journalist

"The Meaning of Freedom", Sol Feinstone Lecture at the United States Military Academy (15 November 2006), as quoted in Moyers on Democracy (2008), p. 78

War, Change

“It all began with my painting a picture of an American flag. Using this design took care of a great deal for me because I didn't have to design it. So I want on to similar things like the targets things the mind already knows. That gave me room to work on other levels. For instance, I've always thought of a painting as a surface; painting it in one color made this very clear... A picture ought to be looked at the same way you look at a radiator.”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

His heart belong to DADA, Time 73, 4 May, 1959: 58; as quoted in Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, Moma New York, 1996, p. 82
1950s

Color, Way, Painting

“"But he doesn't finish his sentences," (he said). And they don't finish their thoughts. — To finish their thoughts. — To finish one's thought! It is a long process, it is rare. It gives intense pleasure. Because every finished thought easily enters the mind. They don't have the same need to be beautiful in order to please. It is enough for them to be finished. The situation of the soul that has had such thoughts communicates itself to other souls and transfers its repose to them.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Pleasure, Beauty, Soul, Communication

“From the beginning of the year to the end, day and night, morning and evening, in action and repose, in speech and in silence, the warrior must keep death constantly before him and have ever in mind that the one death [which he has to give] should not be suffered in vain. In other words [he must have perfect control over his own death] just as if he were holding an intemperate steed in rein. Only he who truly keeps death in mind this way can understand what is meant by [Yamaga Soko's maxim of] "preparedness."”

Yoshida Shoin (1830–1859) Japanese politician

Vol. IV.
Yoshida Shoin Zenshu

Death, Way, Understanding, Silence

“Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior…. The improvement of the blacks in body and mind, in the first instance of their mixture with the whites, has been observed by every one, and proves that their inferiority is not the effect merely of their condition of life. We know that among the Romans, about the Augustan age especially, the condition of their slaves was much more deplorable than that of the blacks on the continent of America…Yet notwithstanding these and other discouraging circumstances among the Romans, their slaves were often their rarest artists. They excelled too in science, insomuch as to be usually employed as tutors to their master’s children. Epictetus, Terence, and Phaedrus, were slaves. But they were of the race of whites. It is not their condition then, but nature, which has produced the distinction.”

Thomas Jefferson book Notes on the State of Virginia

Query XIV
1780s, Notes on the State of Virginia

Life, Children, Age, Imagination

“I’d like the power to make things die with the power of my mind. Not because I have any specific use in mind for it; I just think it’d be useful to have for difficult social situations. Like, if you’re trying to sleep on a plane and a bloke three seats down is laughing really loudly at a film. Or if someone’s trying to make me say something nice about their hideous baby, it would be a good way to change the subject. But then again, that’s really just replacing one awkward social situation with another.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

http://www.darkhorse.com/Blog/1125/interview-yahtzee-croshaw-about-jam
Other Articles

Way, Thinking, Sleep, Change

“The Supreme Power is not a Mind; not a Force; not a Being, but something higher than a Being; something for which we have no words, something for which we have no ideas.”

William Winwood Reade (1838–1875) British historian

Source: The Martyrdom of Man (1872), Chapter IV, "Intellect"

Idea

“Let us calculate the motion of bodies, but also consult the plans of the Intelligence that makes them move.
It seems that the ancient philosophers made the first attempts at this sort of science, in looking for metaphysical relationships between numbers and material bodies. When they said that God occupies himself with geometry, they surely meant that He unites in that science the works of His power with the perspectives of His wisdom.
From the all too few ancient geometers who undertook such studies, we have little that is intelligible or well-founded. The perfection which geometry has acquired since their time puts us in a better position to succeed, and may more than compensate for the advantages that those great minds had over us.”

Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters

Accord de différentes loix de la nature qui avoient jusqu’ici paru incompatibles (1744)

Wisdom, God, Intelligence, Study

“I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.”

Francis Thompson The Hound of Heaven

St. 1.
The Hound of Heaven (1893)

Way, Tear, Laughter, Night

“And he walks round blocks and blocks looking for the door of the humming tinsel windowed skyscraper, round blocks and blocks and still no door. Every time he closes his eyes the dream has hold of him, every time he stops arguing audibly with himself in pompous reasonable phrases the dream has hold of him. Young man to save your sanity you've got to do one of two things… Please mister where's the door to the building? Round the block? Just round the block… one of two unalienable alternatives: go away in a dirty soft shirt or stay in a clean Arrow collar. But what's the use of spending your whole life fleeing the City of Destruction? What about your unalienable right, Thirteen Provinces? His mind unreeling phrases, he walks on doggedly. There's nowhere in particular he wants to go. If only I still had faith in words.”

John Dos Passos book Manhattan Transfer

Source: Manhattan Transfer (1925), pp. 365-366

Life, Faith, Dreams, Time

“Morale is the state of mind. It is steadfastness and courage and hope. It is confidence and zeal and loyalty. It is élan, esprit de corps and determination.”

George Marshall (1880–1959) US military leader, Army Chief of Staff

Military Review (October 1948)

Hope, Confidence, Courage, Loyalty

“The mind of sentient beings as it is in itself has neither marks nor nature. It is like the ocean, like space. Since it is like space, there are no marks that are not subsumed within it. How could it contain a direction such as east or west? Since it is like the ocean, there is no nature that is preserved.”

Wonhyo (617–686) Korean buddhist philosopher

佛說阿彌陀經疏 Bulseol Amitagyeong so (prolegomenon to the Commentary on the Amitabha Sutra Spoken by the Buddha)
Translated by A. Charles Muller

Nature

“I recognize the necessity of animal experiments with my mind but not with my heart.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

"Doctor, Doctor, Cut My Throat" (August 1972), in The Tragedy of the Moon (1973), p. 153
General sources

Heart, Animals

“Rabid suspicion has nothing in it of skepticism. The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Section 184
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

Evil, Personality

“But as soon as I opened a dance school they went who does she think she is? She has become a guru! In their mind they could not accept that anyone could build a place not because they want to be a guru but because they want to give the best to a young bunch of girls. Guru Kelucharan Mahapatra was in charge of Odissi. Kalanidhi Narayan for Abhinaya. Kumudini Lakhia for Kathak. Kalyani Kuttiyamma for Mohiniattam. The Paul Taylor Dance Company did a workshop there. I was not the guru. I was the slave. I was working with my hands -- planting trees, digging the earth, typing, collecting the money. I gave up my dance.”

Protima Bedi (1948–1998) Indian model and dancer

On Her Nityagrama dance school in Bangalore, quoted in "I have been a hippie all my life".

Money, School, Girl, Thinking

“Maybe I sound like some Victorian who felt that forty years ought to be enough for any man, but one of the marks of a live well lived has to be reaching a state of finally getting it, of not needing more, and of being able to sign off with something approaching peace of mind.”

David Rakoff (1964–2012) writer

Don´t Get Too Comfortable (2005)

Peace

“Nothing is so catching as the plague; now, fanaticism, no matter of what nature, is only the plague of the human mind.”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

Memoirs of J. Casanova de Seingalt (1894)

Nature

“The world is full of important ideas, but I'll follow my own mind.”

Sten Nadolny book The Discovery of Slowness

p, 125
The Discovery of Slowness (1983, 1987)

World, Idea

“Most often, the reason something is "on your mind" is that you want it to be different than it currently is, and yet: you haven't clarified exactly what the intended outcomes is; you haven't decided what the very next physical action step is; and/or you haven't put reminders of the outcome and the action required in a system you trust. That's why it's on your mind.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

Source: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (2001), Chapter 1

“What I would like to know is what I should be doing."
"I see what you mean," Freeling said, "but I'm afraid I can't tell you. If you were a lathe operator I'd say make that part, but you're a part of management, and you can't treat managerial people that way."
"Go ahead," Forlesen told him. "I won't mind."
[…] "What I meant was that if I knew what you ought to be doing I'd hire a clerk to do it. You're where you are because we feel—rightly or wrongly—that you can find your own work, recognize it when you see it, and do it or get somebody else to. Just make damn sure you don't step on anybody's toes while you're doing it, and don't make more trouble than you fix. […] Don't come running to me with complaints, and don't let me get any complaints about you. Now what was it you wanted to see me about?"
"I don't," Forlesen said. "You said you wanted to see me.”

Gene Wolfe book Gene Wolfe's Book of Days

"Oh. Well, I'm through."
"Forlesen", Orbit 14 (1974), ed. Damon Knight, Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Gene Wolfe's Book of Days (1981), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Castle of Days (1992), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, The Best of Gene Wolfe (2009)
Fiction

People, Way, Feeling, Parting

“I found that business life is full of creative original minds -along with the usual number of second-guessers, of course.”

John Brooks (writer) (1920–1993) American writer

Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street

Life, Business

“There are some things a chappie's mind absolutely refuses to picture, and Aunt Julia singing 'Rumpty-tiddley-umpty-ay' is one of them.”

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

The Man with Two Left Feet (1917)

Singing

“By what strange law of mind is it that an idea long overlooked, and trodden under foot as a useless stone, suddenly sparkles out in new light, as a discovered diamond?”

Harriet Beecher Stowe book Uncle Tom's Cabin

Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Ch. 38.

Law, Idea, Light

“The minds of some of our statesmen, like the pupil of the human eye, contract themselves the more, the stronger light there is shed upon them.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Preface to Corruption and Intolerance.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Light

“Our call is to young India. It is the young who must be the builders of the new world,.. not those who accept the competitive individualism, the capitalism or the materialistic communism of the West as India's future ideal, not those who are enslaved to old religious formulas and cannot believe in the acceptance and transformation of life by the spirit, but all who are free in mind and heart to accept a completer truth and labour for a greater ideal…. It is with a confident trust in the spirit that inspires us that we take our place among the standard-bearers of the new humanity that is struggling to be born amidst the chaos of a world in dissolution, and of the future India, the greater India of the rebirth that is to rejuvenate the mighty outworn body of the ancient Mother.84”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

August, 1920
India's Rebirth

Life, Truth, World, Confidence

“While the lime-burner was struggling with the horror of these thoughts, Ethan Brand rose from the log, and flung open the door of the kiln. The action was in such accordance with the idea in Bertram's mind, that he almost expected to see the Evil One issue forth, red-hot, from the raging furnace.
Hold! hold!" cried he, with a tremulous attempt to laugh; for he was ashamed of his fears, although they overmastered him. "Don't, for mercy's sake, bring out your Devil now!"
"Man!" sternly replied Ethan Brand, "what need have I of the Devil? I have left him behind me, on my track. It is with such half-way sinners as you that he busies himself. Fear not, because I open the door. I do but act by old custom, and am going to trim your fire, like a lime-burner, as I was once."
He stirred the vast coals, thrust in more wood, and bent forward to gaze into the hollow prison-house of the fire, regardless of the fierce glow that reddened his face. The lime-burner sat watching him, and half suspected this strange guest of a purpose, if not to evoke a fiend, at least to plunge into the flames, and thus vanish from the sight of man. Ethan Brand, however, drew quietly back, and closed the door of the kiln.
"I have looked," said he, "into many a human heart that was seven times hotter with sinful passions than yonder furnace is with fire. But I found not there what I sought. No, not the Unpardonable Sin!"”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

"Ethan Brand" (1850)

Fear, Way, Idea, Business

“Space is not the vague and undetermined medium which Kant imagined; if purely and absolutely homogeneous, it would be of no use, and could not be grasped by the mind. Spatial representation consists essentially in a primary coordination of the data of sensuous experience. But this coordination would be impossible if the parts of space were qualitatively equivalent, if they were really interchangeable.”

Émile Durkheim book The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

Source: The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, 1912, p. 10

Imagination, Parting

“No one any longer knows who will live in this steel-hard casing and whether entirely new prophets or a mighty rebirth of ancient ideas and ideals will stand at the end of this prodigious development. Or, however, if neither, whether a mechanized ossification, embellished with a sort of rigidly compelled sense of self-importance, will arise. Then, indeed, if ossification appears, the saying might be true for the “last humans” in this long civilizational development:narrow specialists without mind, pleasure-seekers without heart; in its conceit, this nothingness imagines it has climbed to a level of humanity never before attained.”

Max Weber book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Source: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905; 1920), Ch. 5 : Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism

Pleasure, Imagination, Idea, Sense

“It occurred to me that to have a naked woman on the radio would be outrageous. And yet really who would it offend? It's all theater of the mind. You don't even really know if she's naked or not.”

Howard Stern (1954) American radio personality

Howard Stern on Piers Morgan Tonight, CNN (January 18, 2011)

“I don't mind a good fight. For reasons known only to God, I've had quite a few tough ones in my life. But I learned an important lesson along the way: In the end, it matters less that you can fight. What you fight for is the real test.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

2000s, 2008, (2008)

Life, God, Way, Learning

“It will say that in peace we have time that a man has vision, has been fed, has worked..
.. That hands and minds and tools and material made a symbol to the elevation of vision”

David Smith (1906–1965) American visual artist (1906-1965)

1940s, The Question – What is your Hope' (c. 1940s)

Peace, Time

“For me, that aspect of my job has been tremendously rewarding. My colleagues are brilliant people with wide-ranging and impressive backgrounds. Sometimes we approach issues from quite different perspectives, or with different priorities or values in mind. Yet we always listen to each other, and our conferences are marked by vibrant debate and discussion. Our commitment to this process, in my view, is the principal mechanism for assuring that we will reach the right decision as often as possible.”

Thomas Rex Lee (1964) Utah Supreme Court justice

A Dialogue with Utah Supreme Court Justice Thomas R. Lee https://web.archive.org/web/20150120094848/www.attorneyatlawmagazine.com/salt-lake-city/dialogue-utah-supreme-court-justice-thomas-r-lee/

People, Decision

“Forced from home and all its pleasures
Afric's coast I left forlorn,
To increase a stranger's treasures
O'er the raging billows borne.
Men from England bought and sold me,
Paid my price in paltry gold;
But, though slave they have enrolled me,
Minds are never to be sold.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

Source: The Negro's Complaint (1788), Lines 1-8

Men, Pleasure, Home, Rage

“It may be true that I had dancing in my blood… I was a toddler when I danced deliriously with that street beggar. All called him a madman when he brought the house down with his frenetic dancing. Was he really mad? His unerring jatis (danced to rhythmic patterns) reverberate in my mind. Who knows which siddhapurusha (literally: “with all accomplishments”) he was? I can still see the gleam in his eye. If I am dance-mad now how could it be otherwise?… My first guru was a madman.”

Balasaraswati (1918–1984) Indian dancer

[Knight, Douglas M., Balasaraswati: Her Art and Life, http://books.google.com/books?id=Q3EsA2NooW4C, 15 June 2010, Wesleyan University Press, 978-0-8195-6906-6, 17-18]
Quote

Dance, Housing, Madness

“Libertarianism. A simple-minded right-wing ideology ideally suited to those unable or unwilling to see past their own sociopathic self-regard.”

Iain Banks book Transition

Transition ISBN 0-316-73107-2 p. 86.
Non-Culture Novels, Transition (2009)

Past

“[Bai Juyi] utilized Confucianism to order his conduct, utilized Buddhism to cleanse his mind, and then utilized history, paintings, mountains, rivers, wine, music and song to soothe his spirit.”

Bai Juyi (772–846) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

Composition for his own tomb inscription, as quoted in Lin Yutang's The Importance of Living (1940), p. 411

Music, History, Mountain, Wine

“We know well that all new cultural beginnings today must be part of world culture; that no truly intellectual life can occur if the mind is restricted; that no art can have genuine and everlasting value if it is not in a universal language. East and West. God knows there is enough restriction. Enough laziness of stereotypes. Smash them, we say to ourselves. And the only way to do that is to open up a true world forum that is absolutely free.”

C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) American sociologist

Listen Yankee (1960), pp. 144-145.
1960s

Life, God, World, Art

“When the object of sense is very violent, it injures sense at once, so that sense, after its occurrence, cannot immediately discern its weaker objects. Thus extreme brightness offends the eye, and a very loud noise offends the ears. Mind, however, is otherwise; by its most excellent object it is neither injured nor ever confused. Nay, rather, after this object is known, it distinguishes inferior things at once more clearly and more truly.”

Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) Italian philosopher

Source: Five Questions Concerning the Mind (1495), p. 205

Sense

“Ladies, just a little more virginity, if you don't mind.”

Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1852–1917) English actor and theatre manager

Remembered by Alexander Woollcott in his Shouts and Murmurs (1922) p. 87.
To actresses playing the ladies-in-waiting in a production of Henry VIII, "peering at them plaintively through his monocle".

“That fabulous polymath Samuel Johnson maintained that no man in his right mind ever read a book through from beginning to end.”

Daniel Bell book The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism

Foreword: 1978, p. xi
The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976)

Books, Reading

“This greatly disturbed the minds of many sisters, and some brethren. The brethren stared and turned pale, and the sisters cried, Sister Howe, in particular, was very much terrified; "Oh, dear me!" said she, "what shall we do? what shall we do? The keys of the kingdom are taken from us, and what shall we do?…. I tell you again," said Sidney, with much feeling, "the keys of the kingdom are taken from you, and you never will have them again until you build me a new house."”

Lucy Mack Smith (1775–1856) American religious leader

The History of Joseph Smith by His Mother (1853), "Rigdon's Depression"

Feeling, Sister, Housing

“To appreciate and use correctly a valuable maxim requires a genius, a vital appropriating exercise of mind, closely allied to that which first created it.”

William R. Alger (1822–1905) American clergyman and poet

p. 180 http://books.google.com/books?id=n6xIAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA180 <br class="br">"The Utility and Futility of Aphorisms," 1863

Exercises

“Occasionally discouragement may darken our pathway; frustration may be a constant companion. In our ears there may sound the sophistry of Satan as he whispers, "You cannot save the world; your small efforts are meaningless. You haven’t time to be concerned for others." Trusting in the Lord, let us turn our heads from such falsehoods and make certain our feet are firmly planted in the path of service and our hearts and souls dedicated to follow the example of the Lord. In moments when the light of resolution dims and when the heart grows faint, we can take comfort from His promise: "Be not weary in well-doing. … Out of small things proceedeth that which is great. Behold, the Lord requireth the heart and a willing mind."”

Thomas S. Monson (1927–2018) president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

Finding Peace, Ensign, Mar. 2004, 3.

World, Soul, Effort, Light

“A thousand years later we still use a form of the original Aztec name… coyotl, pronounced COY-yoht, accent of the first syllable… Their rich mythology produced numerous coyote gods… Huehuecoyotl, or "Venerable Old Coyote"… sounds so much like the widespread North American god-avatar… that the empire-minded Aztecs may have borrowed him from tribes far northward…”

Dan Flores (1948) American historian

Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History (2016)

God

“The inert mind is a greater danger than the inert body, for it overlays and stifles the desire to live.”

Robertson Davies book The Cunning Man

Part 4, section 1.
The Cunning Man (1994)

“It was mathematics, the non-empirical science par excellence, wherein the mind appears to play only with itself, that turned out to be the science of sciences, delivering the key to those laws of nature and the universe that are concealed by appearances.”

Hannah Arendt book The Life of the Mind

Source: The Life of the Mind (1971/1978), p. 7.

Law, Mathematics, Nature, Universe

“Memento mori—remember death! These are important words. If we kept in mind that we will soon inevitably die, our lives would be completely different. If a person knows that he will die in a half hour, he certainly will not bother doing trivial, stupid, or, especially, bad things during this half hour. Perhaps you have half a century before you die—what makes this any different from a half hour?”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: Path of Life (1909), p. 209

Death, Stupidity, Personality

“Never underestimate the power of the mind to disempower.”

John P. Kotter (1947) author of The heart of Change

Step 5, p. 112
The Heart of Change, (2002)

“Let your love flow outward through the universe,
To its height, its depth, its broad extent,
A limitless love, without hatred or enmity.
Then, as you stand or walk,
Sit or lie down,
As long as you are awake,
Strive for this with a one-pointed mind;
Your life will bring heaven to earth.
…
I teach one thing and one only: suffering and the end of suffering.
…
Just as a mother would protect with her life her own son, her only son, so one should cultivate an unbounded mind towards all beings, and loving-kindness towards all the world. One should cultivate an unbounded mind, above and below and across, without obstruction, without enmity, without rivalry.
Standing, or going, or seated, or lying down, as long as one is free from drowsiness, one should practice this mindfulness. This, they say, is the holy state here.”

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

Gautama Buddha, Sutta Nipata
Unclassified

Love, Life, Lie, World

“Agreeable men are those who are interested in everything; men who accomplish things, who finish their tasks, are those who, during a given period of time, interest themselves in one thing only. In America these men are said to possess "single-track minds"' their tenacity and their obsession are sometimes boring, but they succeed, by repeated attacks, in demolishing the obstacles that hinder their progress.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Working

Men, Time

“An unattended mind is the breeding ground of self defeat.”

Guy Finley (1949) American self-help writer, philosopher, and spiritual teacher, and former professional songwriter and musician

The Lost Secrets of Prayer

“A valiant mind no deadly danger fears;”

Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1550–1604) English peer and courtier of the Elizabethan era

From Reason and Affection. First published in Paradyse of Dainty Devices (1576), revised in the 1596 edition. It is also known as "Being in Love he complaineth". Published by Grosart in Miscellanies of the Fuller Worthies' Library, Vol. IV (1872)
Poems

Fear

“First then, we find that when we regard ideas from a nominalistic, individualistic, sensualistic way, the simplest facts of mind become utterly meaningless. That one idea should resemble another or influence another, or that one state of mind should so much as be thought of in another is, from that standpoint, sheer nonsense.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

The Law of Mind (1892)

Way, Idea

“Now, most of you are probably going to be totally bored out of your minds on Christmas day, and here's the perfect distraction. Test 2.6.15-rc7. All the stores will be closed, and there's really nothing better to do in between meals.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Attributed <br class="br">Source: LKML 2005.12.24 http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/12/24/92

Christmas, Perfection

“Once launched into some activity, conceiving of himself as an instrument of God’s will, the ascetic did not stop to ask about the meaning of it all. On the contrary, the more furious his activity, the more the problem of what his activity meant receded from his mind. … To meet the demands of the day was as near as one could come to doing the pious thing, in this—God’s—world. To trouble about meaning was really an impiety and, of course, frivolous, because futile. For the question of meaning, therefore, neither the ascetic nor the therapeutic type feels responsible, if his spiritual discipline has been successful. The recently fashionable religious talk of “ultimate concern” makes no sense either in the ascetic or in the therapeutic mode. To try to relate “ultimate concern” to everyday behavior would be exhausting and nerve-shattering work; indeed, it could effectively inhibit less grandiose kinds of work. Neither the ascetic nor the therapeutic bothers his head about “ultimate concern.” Such a concern is for mystics who cannot otherwise enjoy their leisure. In the workaday world, there are no ultimate concerns, only present ones. Therapy is the respite of every day, during which the importance of the present is learned, and the existence of what in the ascetic tradition came to be called the “ultimate” or “divine” is unlearned.”

Philip Rieff (1922–2006) American sociologist

The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966)

God, World, Behavior, Feeling

“In a stroke of imaginative genius our understanding of consciousness was radically transformed, but in an entirely unexpected way. Critical clues came from diffuse nerve nets and, even more extraordinarily, plant neurobiology. Banished forever was the idea that the brain alone was the seat of consciousness. Rather, it is an 'antenna' embedded in a hyperdimensional matrix. The depths of reality are only now being uncovered, but now the springs of imagination, intuition, abstraction and even pre-cognition are revealed. What was once called the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics was simply a clue to a superbly structured universe where mind is an integral component, instantiated at the big bang or maybe even before? Future exploration offers dizzying prospects, but we are not the first to venture forth. Far in advance of the emergence of human consciousness, innumerable galactic civilisations had slipped into what we now call the Mortimer Manifold.”

Simon Conway Morris (1951) British palaeontologist

"King of Sweden" presenting "Professor Mortimer" with the 2056 Nobel prize, in "Simon Conway Morris forecasts the future" at NewScientist.com (15 November 2006) http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/science-forecasts/dn10477-simon-conway-morris-forecasts-the-future.html.

Way, Imagination, Spring, Mathematics

“I've been thinking on your theories of defensive war, and look, Pete, if you don't mind the opinion of an aging military genius, just this once? Technically, by God, you're probably right. Hell, you're undoubtable right. This may be a time for defensive war. But, Pete, this aint the army for it. We aren't bred for the defense.”

Michael Shaara book The Killer Angels

Lewis Armistead, Part I, CH 4: Longstreet, p. 59
The Killer Angels (1974)

God, War, Age, Hell

“Cause day and night, the lonely stoner seems to free his mind at night, he's all alone through the day and night, the lonely loner seems to free his mind at night”

Kid Cudi (1984) American rapper, singer, songwriter, guitarist and actor from Ohio

-Day 'n' Night
Music

Night

“Before the wonderful, terrible wrestling with words and music there is the state of mind I'm calling 'poetic attention' … a sort of readiness … a form of knowing.”

Don McKay (1942) Canadian poet

Baler Twine

Music

“when a class of men is publicly depressed and harassed (as under Muslim rule)… it merely contents itself with dragging on an animal existence. The Hindus could not be expected to produce the utmost of what they were capable… Amidst such social conditions, the human hand and the human mind cannot achieve their best; the human soul cannot soar to its highest pitch.”

Jadunath Sarkar (1870–1958) Indian historian

Sarkar, A Short History of Aurangzeb, p.153. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 3

Men, Soul, Animals