Quotes about mind
page 72

“What is objective must be common to many minds and consequently transmissible from one to the other, and as this transmission can only come about by… discourse… we are even forced to conclude: no discourse no objectivity.”

Henri Poincaré book The Value of Science

Source: The Value of Science (1905), Ch. 11: Science and Reality

“Desire for embodied existence is the root-cause of trouble. (…) Desire leads to experience. Experience leads to discrimination, detachment, self-knowledge –liberation. And what is liberation after all? To know that you are beyond birth and death. By forgetting who you are and imagining yourself a mortal creature, you created so much trouble for yourself that you have to wake up, like from a bad dream. Enquiry also wakes you up. You need not wait for suffering; enquiry into happiness is better, for the mind is in harmony and peace.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Liberation
Source: "I am That." P.68.

Death, Happiness, Peace, Dreams

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1996)

Way, Science

“The eighteenth-century polymath Thomas Young was the last person to have read all the books published in his lifetime. That means that he would've read all the Shakespeare and all the Greek and Roman classics and all the theology and all the philosophy and all the science. But the same man today, a man who had read all the books published today, would've had to've read all Dan Brown's novels, two volumes of Chris Moyles' autobiography, The World According to Clarkson by Jeremy Clarkson, The World according to Clarkson II by Jeremy Clarkson, The World according to Clarkson III by Jeremy Clarkson… his mind would be awash with bad metaphors and unsustainable, reactionary opinion; one long anecdote about the time that Comedy Dave put a pound coin in the urinal. In short, the man who had read everything published today would be more stupid than a man who had read nothing. That's not a good state of affairs.”

Stewart Lee (1968) English stand-up comedian, writer, director and musician

Series 1 Episode 1: "Toilet Books"

Books, Stupidity, World, Science

“How fleet is a glance of the mind!
Compared with the speed of its flight
The tempest itself lags behind,
And the swift-winged arrows of light.”

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

Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Light, Speed

“Poetry is a sort of inspired mathematics, which gives us equations, not for abstract figures, triangles, squares, and the like, but for the human emotions. If one has a mind which inclines to magic rather than science, one will prefer to speak of these equations as spells or incantations; it sounds more arcane, mysterious, recondite.”

Ezra Pound book The Spirit of Romance

The Spirit of Romance (1910), p. 5

Mathematics, Science

“Choose your enemies carefully ‘cos they will define you
Make them interesting ‘cos in some ways they will mind you
They’re not there in the beginning but when your story ends
Gonna last with you longer than your friend”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

Cedars Of Lebanon
Lyrics, No Line On The Horizon (2009)

Way

“There can be no benefit of an exorcism. It’s not like there could ever be an instance where an actual demon is involved, and a priest would be helpless even in that situation if there were any reality to that. Even if there were some placebo effect to the ritual, it still encourages belief in things that would still persist in the imagination and thus never be fully cured even in the mind of believers. And if the problem stems from any sort of actual mental disorder, then the ritual only postpones or replaces actual medical attention.”

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

Patheos, Satanic Panic and Exorcism in Schools? http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2016/09/21/satanic-panic-and-exorcism-in-schools/ (September 21, 2016)

Imagination, Problem, Reality

“For the poet, the imagination is paramount, and... he dwells apart in his imagination, as the philosopher dwells in his reason, and as the priest dwells in his belief … The imagination is the power of the mind over the possibilities of things.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

The Necessary Angel (1951), Imagination as Value

Imagination

“The universality, invariance, and elegance of principles governing the universe may be reflected in principles of the minds that have evolved in that universe - provided that the mental principles are formulated with respect to the abstract spaces appropriate for the representation of biologically significant objects and their properties. (1) Positions and motions of objects conserve their shapes in the geometrically fullest and simplest way when represented as points and connecting geodesic paths in the six-dimensional manifold jointly determined by the Euclidean group of three· dimensional space and the symmetry group of each object. (2) Colors of objects attain constancy when represented as points in a three-dimensional vector space in which each variation in natural illumination is cancelled by application of its inverse from the three-dimensional linear group of terrestrial transformations of the invariant solar source. (3) Kinds of objects support optimal generalization and categorization when represented, in an evolutionarily shaped space of possible objects, as connected regions with associated weights determined by Bayesian revision of maximum entropy priors”

Roger Shepard (1929) American psychologist

R. N. Shepard, (1994). "Perceptual-cognitive universals as reflections of the world." Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 1, 2–28.

Color, Way, Optimism, Support

“But metre itself implies a passion, i. e. a state of excitement, both in the Poet's mind, & is expected in that of the Reader.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Letter to William Sotheby (13 July 1802)
Letters

Passion

“In 1939, in a stadium much like this, in Munich Germany, they packed it out with young men and women in brown shirts, for a fanatical man standing behind a podium named Adolf Hitler, the personification of evil. And in that stadium, those in brown shirts formed with their bodies a sign that said, in the whole stadium, "Hitler, we are yours." And they nearly took the world. Lenin once said, "give me 100 committed, totally committed men and I'll change the world." And, he nearly did. A few years ago, they took the sayings of Chairman Mao, in China, put them in a little red book, and a group of young people committed them to memory and put it in their minds and they took that nation, the largest nation in the world by storm because they committed to memory the sayings of the Chairman Mao. When I hear those kinds of stories, I think 'what would happen if American Christians, if world Christians, if just the Christians in this stadium, followers of Christ, would say 'Jesus, we are yours'? What kind of spiritual awakening would we have?”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Speech at the Anaheim Angels sports stadium (17 April 2005); transcript and video http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-wilson/follow-jesus-like-nazis-f_b_158295.html

Women, Men, People, Books

“There is no doubt in our minds that the United States spares no effort to put pressure on the Islamic Republic of Iran…The best indication of United States' support to a particular terrorist group […].”

Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel (1945) Iranian politician

U.S. supports "terrorists", Iranian speaker says http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSISL21727120070405 Apr 5, 2007 http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/753B743D-1980-47C6-A64C-625DD11B48A2.htm

Support, Effort

“I believe in a political revolution, without the aid of the military. I would rather win a man’s mind than compel his obedience.”

George Alec Effinger (1947–2002) Novelist, short story writer

Source: Relatives (1973)., Chapter 3 (p. 59).

“For there is no such thing as perpetual Tranquility of mind, while we live here; because Life it selfe is but Motion, and can never be without Desire, nor without Feare, no more than without Sense.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 6, p. 29 (See also: Rene Girard)
Leviathan (1651)

Life, Fear, Sense

“Trains, planes, cars, rockets, telescopes, tires, telephones, radios, television, electricity, atomic energy, computers, and fax machines. All miracles made possible by the minds and spirits of men with names like Ampere, Bell, Caselli, Edison, Ohm, Faraday, Einstein, Cohen, Teller, Shockley, Hertz, Marconi, Morse, Popov, Ford, Volta, Michelin, Dunlop, Watt, Diesel, Galileo, and other "dead white males." … The great majority of advancements past and present have been brought about by the genius and inventiveness of that most "despicable" of colors and genders, the dreaded white male, or, to be exact, by specific, individual white males. This is not to discredit the many contributions coming from nonwhites, but fact is fact. Our most important and consequential inventions have come almost exclusively from white males. … If you eliminate, suppress, or debase the while male, you kill the goose that laid the golden egg. If you ace him out with "affirmative" action, exile him from the family, teach him that he's a blight on mankind, then bon voyage to our society. We will devolve into a Third World cesspool. Where has there ever before in history been a group of human beings who have brought about the likes of the Magna Carta, the U. S. Constitution, and the countless life-saving and life-improving inventions that we now enjoy? … Does this mean we should sit back and let ourselves be governed by someone just because he's a white male? Of course, it doesn't. It means simply that we shouldn't suppress anyone, including white males. Let our God-given gifts run free in a free and just society, free from the oppression and tyranny of social engineers. If anyone has gifts beyond our own—be he a white male or other—be grateful. Maybe we have gifts that in some small way can contribute something of value as well. One way or another, we're all in the same boat. Few of us have truly outstanding gifts. And most of us have to humbly accept that there are others around who are more gifted than we are. In a Democratic society, it's not for Big Brother to decide who shall thrive and who shall struggle in the hive.”

Michael Savage (1942) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, and Author

Source: The Savage Nation: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Borders, Language and Culture (2003), pp. 136–138; "White Male Inventions" http://www.dadi.org/ms_dwm.htm (December 15, 1999)

Life, Men, God, World

“In a piece of my mind the world can't erase
I remember the time and the look on your face
And I will 'till the wind blows the stars from the sky
'cause the road never ends and the soul never dies
Be who you are
just as long as you can
Know in your heart I'm still your man
Headin for home
starlight and stone..”

Kris Kristofferson (1936) American country music singer, songwriter, musician, and film actor

Starlight and Stone
Song lyrics, Closer to the Bone (2009)

World, Home, Soul, Star

“It was abundantly clear from his letters that, virtually to the end, he remained deeply interested in national and world events. Yet he never ceased to engage in self-deprecating humor. I have a file containing a decade of correspondence with my dear friend. It is a file that I will keep. Max's death on April 19 was not unexpected and I am sure he would have viewed it as merciful. At the moving funeral service at Fort Meyer, Ambassador Philip Bonsal, a respected diplomat and longtime friend of the Taylors', spoke eloquently of General Taylor's "example", and correctly said that his friendship would remain a constant treasure in the lives of all of us who knew him. His younger son Tom's superb tribute brought tears to the eyes of most of us. He emphasized the closeness of the Taylor family- a closeness not often found in the lives of the world's great leaders. It typifies the mind and spirit that I was privileged to know. Maxwell Taylor's place in history will be a large one.”

Lewis F. Powell, Jr. (1907–1998) American judge

As quoted in General Maxwell Taylor: The Sword and the Pen (1989) by John Martin Taylor, p. xiv.
1980s

Death, Friendship, World, Family

“As far as dreams were concerned—well dreams are generated by the random processes of neural oscillation during the brain’s rest phases. What dreams do is cycle and recycle images and feelings, rationalisations and fears. There’s nothing special about that. It’s not the dreams that matter (chaff, mental turbulence, the rotating metal bars moving endlessly through the transparent tub of metaphorical slushy). It is what the problem-solving circuits in the mind make of the dreams. Dreams iterate and test mental schemas, discarding the maladaptive to return the adaptive to the slush to be reworked. Dreams are emotional preparations for solving problems—that is why we have evolved them, because problem-solving abilities are highly adaptive and thus strongly evolutionarily selected. Dreams intoxicate the individual out of reliance on common sense and preconception, and tempt her into the orbit of private logic. Dreams have utility.”

Adam Roberts book Jack Glass: The Story of a Murderer

Part 2, Chapter 3, “The Utility of Dreaming” (p. 119).
Jack Glass (2012)

Fear, Dreams, Feeling, Problem

“I claim that the success of current scientific theories is no miracle. It is not even surprising to the scientific (Darwinist) mind. For any scientific theory is born into a life of fierce competition, a jungle red in tooth and claw. Only the successful theories survive—the ones which in fact latched onto the actual regularities in nature.”

Bas van Fraassen (1941) American philosopher

The Scientific Image (1980), p. 40.

Life, Nature, Success

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

Henry Steele Commager (1902–1998) American historian

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

War, Peace, Hope, Silence

“There is now doubt in our minds that Nasser, whether he likes it or not, is now effectively in Russian hands, just as Mussolini was in Hitler's. It would be as ineffective to show weakness to Nasser now in order to placate him as it was to show weakness to Mussolini.”

Anthony Eden (1897–1977) British Conservative politician, prime minister

Eden to President Eisenhower (1 October 1956), quoted in Scott Lucas, Britain and Suez (Manchester University Press, 1996), p. 69

“Anthropology has reached that point of development where the careful investigation of facts shakes our firm belief in the far-reaching theories that have been built up. The complexity of each phenomenon dawns on our minds, and makes us desirous of proceeding more cautiously. Heretofore we have seen the features common to all human thought.”

Franz Boas (1858–1942) German-American anthropologist

Franz Boas (1975) Facial paintings of the Indians of northern British Columbia. p. 4.

“…the Kingdom of Heaven is not a place, but a state of mind.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Source: The Light of Day (1900), Ch. III: Science and Theology

“Until lately the West has regarded it as self-evident that the road to education lay through great books. No man was educated unless he was acquainted with the masterpieces of his tradition. There never was much doubt in anybody's mind about which the masterpieces were. They were the books that had endured and that the common voice of mankind called the finest creations, in writing, of the Western tradition.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

Books, Education

“The elder Herschel, directing his wonderful tube towards the sides of our system, where stars are planted most rarely… was enabled with awe struck mind to see suspended in the vast empyrean astral systems, or, as he called them, firmaments, resembling our own. Like light cloudlets to a certain power of the telescope, they resolved themselves, under a greater power, into stars, though these generally seemed no larger than the finest particles of diamond dust. The general forms of these systems are various; but one at least has been detected as bearing a striking resemblance to the supposed form of our own. The distances are also various… The farthest observed by the astronomer were estimated by him as thirty-five thousand times more remote than Sirius, supposing its distance to be about twenty thousand millions of miles. It would thus appear, that not only does gravitation keep our earth in its place in the solar system, and the solar system in its place in our astral system, but it also may be presumed to have the mightier duty of preserving a local arrangement between that astral system and an immensity of others, through which the imagination is left to wander on and on without limit or stay, save that which is given by its inability to grasp the unbounded.”

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation

Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 6-7

Imagination, Star, Light, Appearance

“It has been suggested that an individual's social identity divides up the world of people and places for him, and that his personal identity does this too, although differently. It is these frames of reference one must apply in studying the daily round of a particular stigmatized person, as he wends his way to and from his place of work, his place of residence, his place of shopping, and the places where he participates in recreation. A key concept here is the daily round, for it is the daily round that links the individual to his several social situations. And one studies the daily round with a special perspective in mind. To the extent that the individual is a discredited person, one looks for the routine cycle of restrictions he faces regarding social acceptance; to the extent that he is discreditable, for the contingencies he faces in managing information about himself.”

Erving Goffman book Stigma

Source: 1950s-1960s, Stigma, 1963, p. 112-3

People, World, Way, Study

“I have no doubt in my mind that our chief national problems relating to the eradication of poverty, illiteracy and disease and the scientific production and distribution can be tackled only along socialistic lines. The Very first thing that our future national government will have to do is to set up a commission for drawing up a comprehensive plan for reconstruction.”

Subhas Chandra Bose (1897–1945) Indian nationalist leader and politician

As quoted in The Alternative Leadership 1936-1941 (1996) by Aleander Werth p. 63

Disease, Problem, Future, Drawing

“Each mental wave we send out from the mind,
Or base, or kind,
Completes its circuit, then with added force
Seeks its own source.”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) American author and poet

Effects.
Poetry quotes, New Thought Pastels (1913)

“In sculpture the projection of the fasciculi must be accentuated, the foreshortening forced, the hollows deepened; sculpture is the art of the hole and the lump, not of clear, well-smoothed, unmodelled figures. Ignorant people, when they see close-knitted true surfaces, say that 'it is not finished.' No notion is falser than that of finish unless it be that of elegance; by means of these two ideas people would kill our art. The way to obtain solidity and life is by work carried out to the fullest, not in the direction of achievement and of copying détails, but in that of truth in the successive schemes. The public, perverted by académie préjudices, confounds art with neatness. The simplicity of the 'École' is a painted cardboard ideal, A cast from life is a copy, the exactest possible copy, and yet it has neither motion nor eloquence. Art intervenes to exaggerate certain surfaces, and also to fine down others. In sculpture everything depends upon the way in which the modelling is carried out with a constant thought of the main line of the scheme, upon the rendering of the hollows, of the projections and of their connections; thus it is that one may get fine lights, and especially fine shadows that are not opaque. Everything should be emphasised according to the accent that it is desired to render, and the degree of amplification is personal, according to the tact and the temperament of each sculptor; and for this reason there is no transmissible process, no studio recipe, but only a true law. I see it in the antique and in Michael Angelo. To work by the profiles, in depth not by surfaces, always thinking of the few geometrical forms from which all nature proceeds, and to make these eternal forms perceptible in the individual case of the object studied, that is my criterion. That is not idealism, it is a part of the handicraft. My ideas have nothing to do with it but for that method; my Danaids and my Dante figures would be weak, bad things. From the large design that I get your mind deduces ideas.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Auguste Rodin: The Man, His Ideas, His Works, 1905, p. 61-63

Life, People, Truth, Law

“True and perfect Friendship is, to make one heart and mind of many hearts and bodies.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

The Sayings of the Wise (1555)

Friendship, Heart, Perfection

“For the early Greek writers Ethiopia was less a geographical location than a state of mind. For Greeks and Romans generally, Ethiopians meant dark-skinned peoples who lived south of Egypt. At times the reference was so vague as to include peoples from West Africa, Arabia, and India. At times it was more localized, referring to the Nubian kingdom of Kush, with its capital first at Napata and later at Meroe. What was constant was that the name Ethiopian denoted a person of dark color — literally, of burnt face — and that it connoted, above all else, remoteness.”

Donald N. Levine (1931–2015) sociologist

Donald N. Levine (2014), Greater Ethiopia: The Evolution of a Multiethnic Society. p. 1

People, Color, Time, Personality

“As Meander says, "For our mind is God;" and as Heraclitus, "Man's genius is a deity."”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Platonic Questions, i
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

God

“Every human being is tried this way in the active service of expectancy. Now comes the fulfillment and relieves him, but soon he is again placed on reconnaissance for expectancy; then he is again relieved, but as long as there is any future for him, he has not yet finished his service. And while human life goes on this way in very diverse expectancy, expecting very different things according to different times and occasions and in different frames of mind, all life is again one nightwatch of expectancy.”

Sören Kierkegaard book Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses: "Patience in Expectancy" (1844)
1840s, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

Life, Way, Time, Future

“If they think their dead grandmother is visiting them at night, more power to them. They don't need me telling them (it's) true or not true. There are those few people who may challenge the facts and say some of the stuff may not be true. I say to them, "Chill out, relax and have an open mind."”

George Noory (1950) Talk Radio Host

Feburary 15, 2006, Wired News: Coast to Coast AM is No Wack Job http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70218-0.html?tw=wn_index_1

People, Thinking, Night, Dead

“This is not belittling it, because I do think it's a very emotionally and intellectually complicated physical performance, and it's the combination of those things that made it a little unusual, I suppose. But I definitely rate The Insider and A Beautiful Mind above that. I probably rate Romper Stomper above it. And there's a hell of a lot of nuance going on in L. A. Confidential as well.”

Russell Crowe (1964) New Zealand-born Australian actor, film producer and musician

On his role in Gladiator.
GQ Interview (2005)

Beauty, Hell, Thinking

“There is a difference between an ardent and a brilliant mind, a fiery spirit travels further and faster, while a brilliant mind is sparkling, attractive, accurate.”

François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680) French author of maxims and memoirs

Reflections on Various Subjects (1665–1678), II. On Difference of Character

Travel

“In every art we are always obliged to return to the accepted means of expression, the conventional language of the art. What is a black-and-white drawing but a convention to which the beholder has become so accustomed that with his mind's eye he sees a complete equivalent in the translation from nature?”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

13 January 1857 (p. 334)
1831 - 1863, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1847 – 1863)

Art, Nature, Drawing

“I departed from parental paths significantly and abruptly one Sunday morning when, sitting in the family pew of the Hyde Park United Church and idly twisting a loose button on the cushion beside me, I said to myself, "I do not believe in God." Some months previously… when our minister fell back on St. Anselm's ontological argument to prove the existence of God, he entirely failed to convince me. Quite the contrary, the argument struck me as an abuse of language. Though I duly submitted to the ritual of confirmation… Horton's unconvincing argument had sown doubt in my mind; and for that reason I can assign, on that morning, listening to his more emotional, hortatory rhetoric… the balance tipped, committing me to a secret, personal rejection of the Christian piety my parents held dear.”

William H. McNeill (1917–2016) Canadian historian

The Pursuit of Truth: A Historian's Memoir (2005)

God, Secret, Family, Parent

“Just like pure water poured in a dirty cup becomes dirty, similarly the pure ego rooted in the impure mind becomes impure ego.”

Baba Hari Dass (1923–2018) master yogi, author, builder, commentator of Indian spiritual tradition

Ego: (p.49)
The Path to Enlightenment is not a Highway, 1996

Water

“But the lover of intelligence must be patient with those who cannot readily share his passion. Some pangs the mind will inflict upon the heart. It is a mistake to think that men are united by elemental affections. Our affections divide us. We strike roots in immediate time and space, and fall in love with our locality, the customs and the language in which we were brought up. Intelligence unites us with mankind, by leading us in sympathy to other times, other places, other customs; but first the prejudiced roots of affection must be pulled up. These are the old pangs of intelligence, which still comes to set a man at variance against his father, saying, “He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me.””

John Erskine (1879–1951) American educator

Source: The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent (1915), p. 30

Love, Men, Intelligence, Lovers

“Look at you people. Look at what's become of the mighty United Kingdom. This land used to be filled with kings and knights and noblemen. You used to rule half the planet, and now you're just as sad and pathetic as the Americans. You can pretend you're not, you can pretend you don't spend your days tucked away in some little pub downing your pints of ale; you can pretend you don't spend every single night filling your lungs and those around you with carcinogens and poisons from your fancy cigarettes and trendy cigars; you can pretend you don't knowingly stuff chewing tobacco in your mouth in one of the most disgusting habits I've ever seen in my life—something that will give you cancer inside of two years. You people are weak-minded. You have no heart, your spirit is broken. You're practically decomposing right before my very eyes as I talk to you, and the only thing you can do is boo or wave a crooked little finger at me and accuse me of being preachy. You people need somebody as righteous as myself to preach to you the proper way to live. You should all aspire to be as great as I am. Do I think I'm better than you? Absolutely, and it's not that hard because my mind is clear; my body, free of poison. Look at me—I am perfect in every way. My strength comes from within, and I don't need a crutch to get through my everyday life like you people, and I certainly don't need a crooked official like Scott Armstrong to fight my battles for me. I filed a formal complaint with the Board of Directors; and as far as tonight goes, I will beat R-Truth just like I'll beat him at Survivor Series, and just like I can easily beat up everybody here in this arena today. Because I am the Choice of a New Generation, and R-Truth's gonna come out here and ask you people, "What's Up?"”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

I'll answer that little riddle for you right now. I tell you "what's up" Straight-edge—that is what's up. No narcotics, no drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes, no prescription medication, and that, you sad, sad people, can save your entire pathetic country and the entire world.
November 13, 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

Life, People, Alcohol, Truth

“…the profoundest lessons are not the lessons of reason; they are sudden strains that permanentlywarp the mind.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

“Basically, I feel different from most other women. I feel I don’t have to put on an act. If I’m not feminine enough for someone, I don’t care, because femininity is different in everyone’s mind.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Moving Beyond Words (1994)

Women, Feeling

“People walkin' around everyday,
Playin' games and takin' scores.
Tryin' to make other people lose their minds.
Well be careful you don't lose yours.Oh think (think)
Think about what you're tryin' to do to me.
Woo-hoo think (think)
Let your mind go let yourself be free.You need me (need me)
And I need you (don't cha know)
Without each other
There ain't nothin' we two can do.”

Aretha Franklin (1942–2018) American musician, singer, songwriter, and pianist

"Think", written with Teddy White, from Aretha Now (1968)
Song lyrics

People, Game, Thinking

“A multitude of causes unknown to former times are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Preface.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

Time

“The central place of epistemology in modern philosophy is no accident… Knowledge was not a problem for the ruling philosophy of the Middle Ages; that the whole world which man's mind seeks to understand is intelligible to it was explicitly taken for granted. That people subsequently came to consider knowledge a problem implies that they had been led to accept certain different beliefs about the nature of man and about the things which he tries to understand.”

Edwin Arthur Burtt (1892–1989) American philosopher

Source: The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1925), p. 2

People, Age, World, Intelligence

“Hitler was very upset by the heavy losses suffered by the parachute units, and came to the conclusion that their surprise value had passed. After that he often said to me: "The day of parachute troops is over." He would not believe reports that the British and Americans were developing airborne forces. The fact that none were used in the St. Nazaire and Dieppe raids confirmed his opinion. He said to me: 'There, you see! They are not raising such forces. I was right.' He only changed his mind after the Allied conquest of Sicily in 1943. Impressed by the way the Allies had used them there, he ordered an expansion of our own airborne forces. But that change of mind came too late - because by then you had command of the air, and airborne troops could not be effectively used in face of a superior air force.”

Kurt Student (1890–1978) German Luftwaffe general during World War II

Quoted in "The Other Side of the Hill" - Page 168 - by Basil Henry Liddell Hart - History - 1948.

Way, Suffering, Change, Loss

“Probably the greatest difference among men is this difference in habits of thought. There are some minds which behave merely like the mechanic who having learned his trade in a certain way never can function in any other.”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: Psychology: What it has to Teach You about Yourself and Your World (1924), p. 83

Men, Way, Learning

“The other boys at Yale came from wealthy families, and none of them were investing outside the United States, and I thought, 'That is very egotistical. Why be so shortsighted or near-sighted as to focus only on America? Shouldn't you be more open-minded?”

John Marks Templeton (1912–2008) stock investor, businessman and philanthropist

The Quotable Sir John

Family, Boy

“And Harry doesn't mind if he doesn't make the scene
He's got a daytime job, he's doing alright.
He can play the honky tonk like anything,
Saving it up for Friday night.
With the Sultans… with the Sultans of Swing.”

Mark Knopfler (1949) English guitarist

Sultans of Swing
Song lyrics, Dire Straits (1978)

Night

“The pre-scientific age, whatever its deficiencies, had at least offered its members the peace of mind that follows from knowing all man-made achievements to be nothing next to the grandeur of the universe. We, more blessed in our gadgetry but less humble in our outlook, have been left … having no more compelling repository of veneration than our brilliant, precise, blinkered and morally troubling fellow human beings.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009), p. 168.

Age, Peace, Universe

“The mind is like the stomach. It is not how much you put into it that counts, but how much it digests — if you try to feed it with a shovel you get bad results.”

Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) American journalist

The Reader's Digest, Vol. 6 (October 1927), p. 343

“If we only knew, the sacred value, And if the might of our pen, is stronger than the swords of men, let us unsheathe our minds, write with our hearts again.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

"What Has Become"
For Whom The Troubadour Sings (2010)

Men, Heart

“My mind is ever toying with economic ideas and relationships. Great novelists and poets have reported occasional abandonment by their muse. The well runs dry, permanently or on occasion. Mine has been a better luck. As I have written elsewhere, there is a vast inventory of topics and problems floating in the back of my mind. More perhaps than I shall ever have occasion to write up for publication. A result that I notice in statistical mechanics may someday help resolve a problem in finance.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

February 1985, in William Breit and Roger W. Spencer (ed.) Lives of the laureates
1980s–1990s

Idea, Problem, Help

“When that feeling of meaninglessness sets in,
Go blowing my mind on God:
The light in the dark, with the neon arms,
The meek He seeks, the beast He calms,
The head of the good soul department.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Lionheart (1978)

God, Feeling, Soul, Light

“I can't trust the current government because of fabrications. The government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar.”

Jared Lee Loughner (1988) Charged with 2011 Tucson shooting

Posted in internet video — Profile of suspect Jared Loughner: ‘I can't trust the current government’, MSNBC, NBC, January 9, 2011, 2011-01-11 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40980334/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/,

People

“A world view is a coherent collection of concepts and theorems that must allow us to construct a global image of the world, and in this way to understand as many elements of our experience as possible.
Societies, as well as individuals, have always contemplated deep questions relating to their being and becoming, and to the being and becoming of the world. The configuration of answers to these questions forms their world view. Research on world views, although we are convinced of its practical value and necessity, will always be primarily an expression of a theoretical interest. It reflects the unlimited openness of the human mind to reality as a whole. Even if this research would not appear to be of any immediate value or necessity – quod non – we still should promote and encourage it energetically, because it also expresses the most unselfish striving of humanity “the desire to know,” a property of “Homo sapiens sapiens.””

Diederik Aerts (1953) Belgian theoretical physicist

Source: World views. From Fragmentation to Integration (1994), p. 8

World, Way, Understanding, Question

“Protocols:
Number 1, paras. 9,10
If every State has two foes, and if in regard to the external foe it is allowed and not considered immoral to use every manner and art of conflict, as for example to keep the enemy in ignorance of plans of attack and defense, to attack him by night or in superior numbers, then in what way can the same means in regard to a worse foe, the destroyer of the structure of society and the commonweal, be called immoral and not permissible?
Is it possible for any sound logical mind to hope with any success to guide crowds by the aid of reasonable counsels and arguments,, when any objection or contradiction, senseless though it may be, can be made and when such objection may find more favor with the people, whose powers of reasoning are superficial?
Graves: The basic ideas are the same despite word changes like… “two kinds of enemies” versus, “two foes.””

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), p.74

People, Hope, Art, Way

“I have had considerable experience in dealing with minds of low logical power, and have found that studies may be made so easy and mechanical as to render thought almost superfluous.”

Robert Potts

Criticising Charles Dodgson's Notes on the First Two Books of Euclid, quoted in Robin Wilson, Lewis Carroll in Numberland (2008) p. 87

Study

“The chief pleasure of his life in these days was to go down the road and look through the window in the wall in the hope of seeing the beautiful Island. … the sight of the Island and the sounds became very rare … and the yearning for the sight … became so terrible that John thought he would die if he did not have them again soon. … it came into his head that he might perhaps get the old feeling-for what, he thought, had the Island ever given him but a feeling?–by imagining. He shut his eyes and set his teeth again and made a picture of the Island in his mind.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Pilgrim's Regress

Pilgrim’s Regress 12–13
The Pilgrim's Regress (1933)

Life, Pleasure, Beauty, Hope

“Äärelä (Minne muistot matkaa): I wish that in my mind I'll always be able to find my way back to these special moments of ours. A wedding waltz.”

Pauli Hanhiniemi (1964) Finnish musician and composer

Way, Wedding

“Cosmides and Tooby argue that music's function in the developing child is to help prepare its mind for a number of complex cognitive and social activities, exercising the brain so that it will be ready for the demands placed on it by language and social interaction. …Mother-infant interactions involving music almost always entail both singing and rhythmic movement…”

Daniel Levitin (1957) American psychologist

This is Your Brain on Music (2006)

Music, Exercises, Singing, Help

“The happiness of the world is transitory. The less you become attached to the world, the more you enjoy peace of mind.”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

[Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations, 226]

Happiness, World, Peace

“Hitherto, the well-to-do have governed this country for their own interest; and I will do them this credit—they have achieved their object. Now I trust the time is approaching for those who work and have not. My aim in life is to make life pleasanter for this great majority; I do not care if it becomes in the process less pleasant for the well-to-do minority. Take America, for instance. Cultured persons complain that the society there is vulgar; less agreeable to the delicate tastes of delicately trained minds. But it is infinitely preferable to the ordinary worker.”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

Said to Beatrice Webb as recorded in her diary (12 January 1884), quoted in Webb, My Apprenticeship (Penguin, 1971), p. 141.
1880s

Life, Time, Personality, Training

“I thank God who has blessed Mysore so abundantly in material ways that He has blessed her also with a sincere, modest, liberal-minded and industrious people; and I thank my people themselves, my Government and my officers that by their hearty co-operation for the good of Mysore they have earned for it the name of the Model State and the signal proof of appreciation which we have just received from the Supreme Government…. And I appeal specially to the rising generation to hold before themselves always the ideal of brotherhood and good citizenship, so that when they come to fill our places, they may continue in all good ways to advance and increase the welfare of our beloved Motherland.”

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

In his address to the public on the occasion of his Silver Jubilee of his reign. Modern_Mysore, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Open University, 26 November 2013, archive.org, 347-49 http://archive.org/stream/modernmysore035292mbp/modernmysore035292mbp_djvu.txt, <br class="br">As ruler of the state

God, People, Way, Sincerity

“Every presentation of philosophy, whether oral or written, is to be taken and can only be taken in the sense of a means. Every system is only an expression or image of reason, and hence only an object of reason, an object which reason—a living power that procreates itself in new thinking beings—distinguishes from itself and posits as an object of criticism. Every system that is not recognized and appropriated as just a means, limits and warps the mind for it sets up the indirect and formal thought in the place of the direct, original and material thought.”

Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) German philosopher and anthropologist

Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 67
Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy (1839)

Thinking, Sense

“Up and down that road in our worn out shoes.
Talkin' 'bout good things and singin' the blues.
You went your way and I stayed behind.
We both knew it was just a matter of time.
You're liv-in out dreams of you on top.
My mind is achin' and, Lord it won't stop.
That's how it happened livin' life by the drop.”

Stevie Ray Vaughan (1954–1990) American guitarist, songwriter and recording artist

"Life by the Drop", "The Sky is Crying"
Song lyrics

Life, Dreams, Shoe, Way

“"Why not just kill all the bad people? Isn't that kind of cruel to destroy the whole world? After all, the penguins didn't sin." Well, we know that God destroyed the whole world. I think there are some things to consider about this flood. Number one, the Flood left evidence where a miracle would not. If God had just said, "Okay, I want everybody to die, except for Noah and his family", then what evidence would be left behind from that? The effects are here today for us to see and remember the judgment of God on sin. Plus, by God telling Noah to build the boat, that gave everybody warning time. Here is Noah out there for many years, some people say seven years, some people say a hundred and twenty years. The Bible doesn't say, but Noah is building this ark for a long time. People are watching him put this big boat together and said, "Noah, are you crazy? What are you doing?" He says, "Man, it's going to rain." Now keep in mind, I don't think you can prove this dogmatically, but it probably never rained before the Flood came. So Noah was preaching about something that had never happened. He said, "Hey guys, guess what. Rain is going to fall out of the sky." Everybody is looking around saying, "Yeah right, that's never happened." They thought that he was nuts. Hey, we're doing the same thing today as Christians. We're going around saying, "Hey, one of these days and angel is going to come down with the Lord and they're going to come through the clouds and blow a trumpet and the Southern Baptists rise first, (you know the dead in Christ go first) and then the rest of us are going to take off for heaven." And everybody is looking at us and saying, "Yeah right. Nobody has ever heard a trumpet blown from a cloud and seen people take off for the clouds. That's just never happened." We are preaching that something is going to happen that has never happened in the history of humanity. That's what Noah was doing. He was preaching something that was going to happen and what he was preaching about had never happened. So while he was preaching, this gave people a chance to repent.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Hovind theory

God, People, World, Family

“Seneca, in advising retirement, had also warned of dangers. In a dialogue called “On Tranquility of Mind,” he wrote that idleness and isolation could bring to the fore all the consequences of having lived life in the wrong way, consequence that people usually avoided by keeping busy—that is, by continuing to live life in the wrong way.”

Sarah Bakewell book How to Live

Source: How to Live, or, A Life of Montaigne in one Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer (2010), pp. 29-30.

Life, People, Way, Business

“Five years after Sir Syed’s death in 1898, his successor, Viqar-ul-Mulk, wrote a letter to The Pioneer of Lucknow. He said: “We start with the firm conviction and seek to implant it in the mind of every Indian Musalman that our destiny is now bound up with the presence and permanence of British rule in this country, and that in the government of the day we have got our best and surest friend.””

Nawab Waqar-ul-Mulk Kamboh (1841–1917) Politician for India's independence

Letter cited in Francis Robinson, Separatism Among Indian Muslims, Delhi, 1975, p. 139. Quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (1995). Muslim separatism: Causes and consequences. ISBN 9788185990262

Death, Country

“You should've said no, you should've gone home.
You should've thought twice before you let it all go.
You should've known that word 'bout what you did with her
Would get back to me…And I should've been there, in the back of your mind.
I shouldn't be asking myself why.
You shouldn't be begging for forgiveness at my feet…
You should've said no, baby and you might still have me.”

Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter

Should've Said No.
Song lyrics, Taylor Swift (2006)

Home, Forgiveness, Baby

“No man could have written from memory Mr. Otis’s argument of four or five hours, against the acts of trade, as revenue laws, and against writs of assistance, as a tyrannical engine to execute them, the next day after it was spoken. How awkward, then, would be an attempt to do it after a lapse of fifty-seven years! Nevertheless, some of the heads of his discourse are so indelibly imprinted on my mind, that I will endeavor to give you some very short hints of them.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

1810s, Letter to William Tudor (1818)

Law, Memory

“Humans lived for several million years as fully wild beings: only in the last 10, 000 did we invent agriculture; only in the last couple of centuries did we invent industry. We are a species that has spent 99 per cent of its history as hunter-gatherers. We haven't had time for our unconscious minds and our unconscious needs to have changed. If you like, our souls have not changed, and this is true whether or not we believe that we have them.”

Simon Barnes (1951) British journalist

How To Be Wild (2007)

Soul, History, Change, Time

“Look at the material on which to draw. Here is the North, powerful, virile, aggressive, blended with the luxurious, ease-loving, more impetuous South. Again you have the merging of a cold phlegmatic temperament with one mercurial and volatile. Still again the union of great native mental strength, developed or undeveloped, with bodily vigor, but with inferior mind. See, too, what a vast number of environmental influences have been at work in social relations, in climate, in physical surroundings. Along with this we must observe the merging of the vicious with the good, the good with the good, the vicious with the vicious.”

Luther Burbank (1849–1926) American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science

p, 125
The Training of the Human Plant (1907)

Love, Drawing

“There can be no covenants between men and lions, wolves and lambs can never be of one mind, but hate each other out and out an through.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

The Iliad of Homer, Rendered into English Prose (1898), Book XXII

Men, Hate

“In my mind, I’m a builder in the traditional, 15th century way. I like building nice structures. Whatever else it takes to do that, I’ll do it.”

Kamal Sagar (1969) Architect

INC Magazine Interview

Way

“Nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But there is no doubt in my mind that the lion belongs with it even if he cannot reveal himself to the eye all at once because of his huge dimension. We see him only the way a louse sitting upon him would.”

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

Variant: Nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But I do not doubt that the lion belongs to it even though he cannot at once reveal himself because of his enormous size.<br><br>As quoted by Abraham Pais in Subtle is the Lord:The Science and Life of Albert Einstein (1982), p. 235 ISBN 0-192-80672-6 <br class="br">Source: Letter to Heinrich Zangger (10 March 1914), quoted in The Curious History of Relativity by Jean Eisenstaedt (2006), p. 126 http://books.google.com/books?id=d2bnXTOtCD8C&lpg=PP1&pg=PA126#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Way, Nature

“From experience it has been observed that a newly converted Communist frequently acquires a feeling of omniscient superiority over his unconverted fellow men. He feels that at last the universe is laid out before him in a simple, comprehensible manner. If he has never wrestled with philosophical problems before he is likely to be overwhelmed by the infatuating possibility that through Dialectical Materialism man has finally solved all of the basic problems necessary to understand the universe. In this state of mind the student will often drop his attitude of critical inquiry. He will invite indoctrination in heavy doses because of his complete assurance that he has at last discovered Truth in its ultimate form.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

Men, Truth, Feeling, Understanding

“Piety, then, needs a counterpoise, something to prevent it from being exercised in an excessively rigid way; and this it has, in most intellectual temperaments, in the quality I would call playfulness. We speak of the play of the mind; and certainly the intellectual relishes the play of the mind for its own sake, and finds in it one of the major values in life. What one thinks of here is the element of sheer delight in intellectual activity. Seen in this guise, intellect may be taken as the healthy animal spirits of the mind, which come into exercise when the surplus of mental energies is released from the tasks required for utility and mere survival. “Man is perfectly human,” said Schiller, “only when he plays.” And it is this awareness of an available surplus beyond the requirements of mere existence that his maxim conveys to us. Veblen spoke often of the intellectual faculty as “idle curiosity”—but this is a misnomer in so far as the curiosity of the playful mind is inordinately restless and active. This very restlessness and activity gives a distinctive cast to its view of truth and its discontent with dogmas.”

Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970) American historian

Source: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974), p. 30

Life, Truth, Way, Exercises