Quotes about mind (10000 quotes, page 8)

“You see, Doctor, God didn't kill that little girl. Fate didn't butcher her and destiny didn't feed her to those dogs. If God saw what any of us did that night he didn't seem to mind. From then on I knew… God doesn't make the world this way. We do.”

Alan Moore book Watchmen

Source: Watchmen

God , Fate , World , Dogs

“Pools of sorrow waves of joy are drifting thorough my open mind possessing and caressing m”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Joy

“All the resources we need are in the mind.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

“My darling," she said at last, are you sure you don't mind being a mouse for the rest of your life?"
"I don't mind at all" I said.
It doesn't matter who you are or what you look like as long as somebody loves you.”

Roald Dahl book The Witches

Source: The Witches

Love , Life

“Creative minds are uneven, and the best of fabrics have their dull spots.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

“Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Literature

“A sound mind in a sound body, is a short but full description of a happy state in this world.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 1
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

World , Happiness

“No weakness of the human mind has more frequently incurred animadversion, than the negligence with which men overlook their own faults, however flagrant, and the easiness with which they pardon them, however frequently repeated.”

Samuel Johnson The Rambler

Source: The Rambler

Men

“I don't mind your showing me your legs. They're very swell legs and it's a pleasure to make their acquaintace. I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter nights.”

Raymond Chandler book The Big Sleep

Source: The Big Sleep (1939), chapter 3
Context: Her hot black eyes looked mad. "I don't see what there is to be cagey about," she snapped. "And I don't like your manners."
"I'm not crazy about yours," I said. "I didn't ask to see you. You sent for me. I don't mind your ritzing me or drinking your lunch out of a Scotch bottle. I don't mind your showing me your legs. They're very swell legs and it's a pleasure to make their acquaintance. I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings. But don't waste your time trying to cross-examine me."

Pleasure , Winter , Night

“Once you have had a glimpse of awareness or Presence, you know it firsthand. It is no longer just a concept in your mind.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

“I only know as much about myself as my mind can work out under its current conditions. And its current conditions are not good.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

“Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Birthday , Age , Funny

“God guard me from those thoughts men think
In the mind alone.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

Men , God , Thinking

“Peace of mind comes from not wanting to change others.”

Gerald G. Jampolsky (1925) American writer and psychiatrist

Source: Love Is Letting Go of Fear

Peaceful , Peace , Change

“Reading activates and exercises the mind.
Reading forces the mind to discriminate. From the beginning, readers have to recognize letters printed on the page, make them into words, the words into sentences, and the sentences into concepts.
Reading pushes us to use our imagination and makes us more creatively inclined.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

Exercises , Imagination , Reading

“It is only necessary to make war with five things; with the maladies of the body, the ignorances of the mind, with the passions of the body, with the seditions of the city and the discords of families.”

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

As quoted in The Biblical Museum: A Collection of Notes Explanatory, Homiletic, and Illustrative on the Holy Scriptures, Especially Designed for the Use of Ministers, Bible-students, and Sunday-school Teachers (1873) http://books.google.com/books?id=aJ8CAAAAQAAJ&pg=RA1-PA331&dq=%22only+necessary+to+make+war+with+five+things%22&ei=8jG1SZKiIIGklQTL0KHHDg by James Comper Gray, Vol. V

War , Family , Passion

“Searching for truth is itself a big illusion because whatever we term the truth is always and everywhere. We don't have to search for it; we don't have to seek it; it always is. Now the only problem is your inability to experience life beyond what you call mind; or right now your capability to experience life only through the limited dimension that we call mind. That is the only problem.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Himalayan Lust

Life , Truth , Search , Problem

“I cannot conceive how anybody in his right mind should go to a psychoanalyst.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

“What the eye doesn't see and the mind doesn't know, doesn't exist.”

D.H. Lawrence book Lady Chatterley's Lover

Source: Lady Chatterley's Lover

“There is no doubt in my mind, that I have found out how to begin (at 40) to say something in my own voice.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“I love the dark hours of my being.
My mind deepens into them.
There I can find, as in old letters,
the days of my life, already lived,
and held like a legend, and understood.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Source: Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

Love , Life

“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.”

Thomas Paine book The Age of Reason

Source: 1790s, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794)

“The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking.”

Christopher Morley (1890–1957) American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet

Books , Thinking

“Yes; poor Bunbury is a dreadful invalid.
Well, I must say, Algernon, that I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shillyshallying with the question is absurd.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

Question , Thinking , Time

“The book is a film that takes place in the mind of the reader. That's why we go to movies and say, "Oh, the book is better.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Books

“Prayer is the force as real as terrestrial gravity. As a physician, I have seen men, after all other therapy had failed, lifted out of disease and melancholy by the serene effort of prayer. Only in prayer do we achieve that complete and harmonious assembly of body, mind and spirit which gives the frail human reed its unshakable strength.”

Alexis Carrel (1873–1944) French surgeon and biologist

Men , Disease , Effort

“When I am king they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.”

Mark Twain book The Prince and the Pauper

Source: The Prince and the Pauper

Books

“… the "Mind of God," which Einstein wrote eloquently about, is cosmic music resonating throughout hyperspace.”

Michio Kaku (1947) American theoretical physicist, futurist and author

Source: Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos

God , Music

“The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Business

“His mind worked fast, flying in emergency supplies of common sense, as human minds do, to construct a huge anchor in sanity and prove that what happened hadn't really happened and, if it had happened, hadn't happened much.”

Terry Pratchett Thud!

Source: Thud!

Sense , Flying

“You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.”

Frank McCourt book Angela's Ashes

Source: Angela's Ashes (1996)
Context: He says, you have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind about history and everything else but you can’t make up an empty mind. Stock your mind, stock your mind. You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.

Shoe

“I made up my mind that I would hold onto nothing, that I would expect nothing.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer

“Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our one duty is to furnish it well.”

Peter Ustinov book Dear Me

Dear Me (1977)

“The face is a picture of the mind with the eyes as its interpreter.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

“The young student sits with his head bent over his books, and his mind straying in youth's dreamland; where prose is prowling on the desk and poetry hiding in the heart.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Source: Lover's Gift

Books , Youth , Heart

“When I cannot sing my heart, I can only speak my mind.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

"Julia" (1968); these lines were adapted from lines of Sand and Foam (1926) by Khalil Gibran: "When life does not find a singer to sing her heart she produces a philosopher to speak her mind."
Lyrics

Singing , Heart

“If your mind carries a heavy burden of past, you will experience more of the same. The past perpetuates itself through lack of presence. The quality of your consciousness at this moment is what shapes the future.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

Past , Future

“Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content, The quiet mind is richer than a crown…”

Robert Greene (dramatist) (1558–1592) English author

Source: Greene's Farewell to Folly (1591)
Context: Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content;
The quiet mind is richer than a crown;
Sweet are the nights in careless slumber spent;
The poor estate scorns fortune’s angry frown;
Such sweet content, such minds, such sleep, such bliss;
Beggars enjoy, when princes oft do miss”

“Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Source: King Henry VI, Part 3

“Nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose- a point on which the soul can focus its intellectual eye”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Robert Walton in "Letter 1"
Source: Frankenstein (1818)
Context: I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven, for nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose — a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.

Soul

“It wasn't the fog I minded, Cathleen. I really love fog. It hides you from the world and the world from you. You feel that everything has changed, and nothing is what it seemed to be. No one can find or touch you any more. Its the foghorn I hate. It won't let you alone. It keeps reminding you, and warning you, and calling you back.”

Eugene O'Neill Long Day's Journey into Night

Page 100-101 (Act 3)
Long Day's Journey into Night (1955)
Source: Long Day's Journey Into Night

Love , Hate , World , Feeling

“Emotions arise in the place where your mind and body meet”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“Just remember, you can do anything you set your mind to, but it takes action, perseverance, and facing your fears.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

Excerpt from the foreword in Girl Boss: Running the Show Like the Big Chicks http://www.gilliananderson.ws/transcripts/99_00/99girlboss.shtml, by Stacy Kravetz (1999)
1990s

For women , Fear , Perseverance

“I hope you liked them, Reader; that they did for you what any good story should do--make you forget the real stuff weighing on your mind for a little while and take you away to a place you've never been. It's the most amiable sort of magic I know.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Hope , Forgetting

“Don't you worry your pretty little mind. People throw rocks at things that shine and life makes love look hard”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Love , Life , People , Making love

“All artists, whether they know it or not create from a place of inner stillness, a place of no mind.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Variant: All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.
Source: Stillness Speaks

“Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary. It's time for that to end.”

Sebastian Junger (1962) American author, journalist and documentarian

Source: Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

People , Art , Feeling , Time

“The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.”

John Ruskin book The Stones of Venice

Volume II, chapter V, section 30.
Source: The Stones of Venice (1853)

Love

“My mind and gut are never simpatico: Every time I think somebody likes me, she doesn't; every time I think somebody doesn't like me, she does. This has never changed and I'm certain it never will.”

Chuck Klosterman book Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Source: Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Thinking , Change , Time

“The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Proper Studies (1927)

Religion , Solitude

“Negroes
Sweet and docile,
Meek, humble, and kind:
Beware the day
They change their minds!

Wind
In the cotton fields,
Gentle breeze:
Beware the hour
It uproots trees!”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

Tree , Change

“How can I tell," said the man, "that the past isn't a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?”

Douglas Adams book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

The Salmon of Doubt (2002)
Source: Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #2)

Past

“Death is a state of mind---many people on Earth spend their entire lives dead.”

Gabrielle Zevin book Elsewhere

Source: Elsewhere

Death , People , Dead

“A man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind may take possession of anything else to which he is justly entitled.”

Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) American businessman and philanthropist

“Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Exercises

“Principles for the Development of a Complete Mind: Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses- especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Art , Sense , Study , Learning

“I have had long association with Thengadiji. I was present in the Bhopal meeting in which the decision to form the BMS was taken. During the discussion to decide the name of the new organisation, Thengadiji had suggested the name Shramjivi Sangathan. The name Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh was coined keeping in view the fact that the name should be simple and meaningful. I feel trade unionism is facing a crisis today. We have before us two paths, one of these is on the way out. There is a need to find out the third one. Workers' interests should be protected but at the same time the nation's interest too must be borne in mind. The workers' movement is in a crisis and how to balance things in a changing scenario should be considered using the third way out, which was what Thengadi had been attempting. Whatever Thengadiji has written should be read by all of us. I feel it will guide us for long.”

Dattopant Thengadi (1920–2004) Indian politician

Atal Bihari Vajpayee, The Organiser, 31 October 2004 issue. p. 13, Article Named- 'His writings will guide us' https://web.archive.org/web/20120331123458/http://organiser.org/archives/historic/dynamic/modulesa3a9.html?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=48&page=13

Way , Feeling , Decision , Change

“Every development of truths which relate to human nature, and more especially its active manifestations, is attended with a wish to see worked out in practice what theory has shown us to be just and good. To man, whose mind is seldom satisfied with the calmly beneficent influence of abstract ideas, this desire is perfectly natural, and it increases in liveliness with the spirit of benevolent sympathy in social happiness and well-being. But, however natural in itself, and however noble in its origin, this desire has not unfrequently led to hurtful consequences,—nay, often to greater evils than the colder indifference, or (as from the very opposite cause the same effect may follow) the glowing enthusiasm, which, comparatively heedless of reality, delights only in the pure beauty of ideas.”

Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835) German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin

Source: The Limits of State Action (1792), Ch. 16

Truth , Beauty , Idea , Nature

“(…) if you can change yourself you will find that no other change is needed. To change the picture you merely change the film, you do not attack the cinema screen! (…) Clarify your mind, purify your heart, sanctify your life – this is the quickest way to a change of your world.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Change
Source: I am That, P.129.

Life , World , Way , Change

“It seemed that at the end of the lecture Dr. Krokowski was making propaganda for psycho-analysis; with open arms he summoned all and sundry to come unto him. "Come unto me," he was saying, though not in those words, " come unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy-laden." And he left no doubt of his conviction that all those present were weary and heavy-laden. He spoke of secret suffering, of shame and sorrow, of the redeeming power of the analytic. He advocated the bringing of light into the unconscious mind and explained how the abnormality was metamorphosed into the conscious emotion; he urged them to have confidence; he promised relief.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 4

Secret , Confidence , Light , Suffering

“If you have had an unfortunate experience, forget it. If you have made a failure in speech, your song, your book, your article, if you have been placed in an embarrassing position, if you have fallen and hurt yourself by a false step, if you have been slandered and abused, do not dwell upon it. There is not a single redeeming feature in these memories, and the presence of their ghosts will rob you of many a happy hour. There is nothing in it. Drop them. Forget them. Wipe them out of your mind forever. If you have been indiscreet, imprudent, if you have been talked about, if your reputation has been injured so that you fear you can never outgrow it or redeem it, do not drag the hideous shadows, the rattling skeletons about with you, Rub them off from the shite of memory. Wipe them out. Forget them. Start with a clean slate and spend all your energies in keeping it clean for the future.”

Orison Swett Marden (1850–1924) American writer

Masterful Personality (1923).

Books , Fear , Failure , Memory

“The idea of atomic energy is illusionary but it has taken so powerful a hold on the minds, that although I have preached against it for twenty-five years, there are still some who believe it to be realizable.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

Quoted in 'Tesla, 75, Predicts New Power Source', New York Times (5 Jul 1931), Section 2, 1.

Idea

“To [aunt] Marie Hill,
Dearest
Why do you tempt me? I really cannot. It's impossible! Be happy? The only thought I have in my mind is to immerse myself in my art, to merge completely with it until I can begin to express what I really feel – and after that to be consumed even more by it. Even if I wanted to, I could not leave here [Worpswede]… I want to live here. I want to 'live' – and develop further as a person and as an artist… Can you understand this? I think you can. And do you approve? I hope so. In any case, I can't do any different..”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

In a letter to her aunt Mary Hill, from Worpswede, June 1899; as quoted in Paula Modersohn-Becker – The Letters and Journals, ed: Günther Busch & Lotten von Reinken; (transl, A. Wensinger & C. Hoey; Taplinger); Publishing Company, New York, 1983, p. 135
1899

Hope , Art , Feeling , Understanding

“Gratitude is a rare frame of mind; and those who are grateful can seldom find a way to express what they feel. They are overwhelmed by silence; are shamefaced; and, sometimes, actually try to hide their feelings.”

Stefan Zweig book Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman

Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman (1927)

Way , Feeling , Silence , Gratitude

“No envy is more mean than that of small-minded beings when they see a neighbor lifted, as though borne aloft by angels, out of the dull drudgery of their common existence; petty spirits are more ready to forgive a prince the most fabulous wealth than a fellow-sufferer beneath the same yoke the smallest degree of freedom.”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

Angels , Forgiveness , Freedom , Suffering

“In view of our strategic goal, and keeping in mind that objective conditions within "Western Armenia" have made it necessary to re-evaluate the future status of that region vis-a-vis the Armenians, we have argued that the much-vaunted "Free, Independent and United Armenia" is neither attainable nor preferable, from the position of the interests of the Armenian people. Propagating this chimerical goal only depletes our already limited human and material resources and wastes time which we cannot afford to waste.”

Monte Melkonian (1957–1993) National Hero of Armenia

Source: The Right to Struggle (1993), P. 62.

People , Time , Future

“It is unjust to call imaginary the diseases which are, on the contrary, only too real, since they proceed from our mind, the only regulator of our equilibrium and our health.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

The New Gods (1969)

Health , Disease

“If one regards life and death as natural processes, the metaphysical dread vanishes, and one obtains "peace of mind."”

Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899–1990) Norwegian philosopher, mountaineer, and author

Source: The Last Messiah (1933), To Be a Human Being https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4m6vvaY-Wo&t=1110s (1989–90)

Life , Death , Peace , Nature

“As one reads the scriptures of Christianity and Islam with a morally alert mind, one starts getting sick of the very sound of word ‘god’ which word is littered all over this literature like dead leaves in autumn. The deeds which are ascribed to or approved of by this God are quite often so cruel and obnoxious as to leave one wondering that if these are the doings of the Divine, what else is there which is left for the Devil to do.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Defence of Hindu Society (1983)

God , Literature , Autumn , Reading

“For nearly five years the present Ministers have harassed every trade, worried every profession, and assailed or menaced every class, institution, and species of property in the country. Occasionally they have varied this state of civil warfare by perpetrating some job which outraged public opinion, or by stumbling into mistakes which have been always discreditable, and sometimes ruinous. All this they call a policy, and seem quite proud of it; but the country has, I think, made up its mind to close this career of plundering and blundering.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Letter to Lord Grey de Wilton (3 October 1873), cited in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, Vol. 5 (1920), p. 262.

Thinking , Country

“Our virtues themselves are not free and floating qualities over which we retain a permanent control and power of disposal; they come to be so closely linked in our minds with the actions in conjunction with which we make it our duty to practice them, that, if we are suddenly called upon to perform some action of a different order, it takes us by surprise, and without our supposing for a moment that it might involve the bringing of those very same virtues into play.”

Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time

Source: In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol II: Within a Budding Grove (1919)

“It is not my purpose here to discuss the question of vegetarianism, or to meet the objections that may be urged against it; though it must be admitted that of these objections not one can withstand a loyal and scrupulous inquiry. I, for my part, can affirm that those whom I have known to submit themselves to this regimen have found its result to be improved or restored health, marked addition of strength, and the acquisition by the mind of a clearness, brightness, well-being, such as might follow the release from some secular, loathsome, detestable dungeon.”

Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949) Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist

Source: The Buried Temple (1902), Ch. III: "The Kingdom of Matter", § 5

Health , Question , Parting

“Often it is only after immense intellectual effort, which may have continued over centuries, that humanity at last succeeds in achieving knowledge of a concept in its pure form, by stripping off the irrelevant accretions which veil it from the eye of the mind.”

Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) mathematician, logician, philosopher

Translation J. L. Austin (Oxford, 1950) as quoted by Stephen Toulmin, Human Understanding: The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts (1972) Vol. 1, p. 56.
Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, 1893 and 1903

Knowledge , Effort

“The very fact that religions are not content to stand on their own feet, but insist on crippling or warping the flexible minds of children in their favour, forms a sufficient proof that there is no truth in them. If there were any truth in religion, it would be even more acceptable to a mature mind than to an infant mind—yet no mature mind ever accepts religion unless it has been crippled in infancy. … The whole basis of religion is a symbolic emotionalism which modern knowledge has rendered meaningless & even unhealthy. Today we know that the cosmos is simply a flux of purposeless rearrangement amidst which man is a wholly negligible incident or accident. There is no reason why it should be otherwise, or why we should wish it otherwise. All the florid romancing about man's "dignity", "immortality", &c. &c. is simply egotistical delusions plus primitive ignorance. So, too, are the infantile concepts of "sin" or cosmic "right" & "wrong". Actually, organic life on our planet is simply a momentary spark of no importance or meaning whatsoever. Man matters to nobody except himself. Nor are his "noble" imaginative concepts any proof of the objective reality of the things they visualise. Psychologists understand how these concepts are built up out of fragments of experience, instinct, & misapprehension. Man is essentially a machine of a very complex sort, as La Mettrie recognised nearly 2 centuries ago. He arises through certain typical chemical & physical reactions, & his members gradually break down into their constituent parts & vanish from existence. The idea of personal "immortality" is merely the dream of a child or savage. However, there is nothing anti-ethical or anti-social in such a realistic view of things. Although meaning nothing in the cosmos as a whole, mankind obviously means a good deal to itself. Therefore it must be regulated by customs which shall ensure, for its own benefit, the full development of its various accidental potentialities. It has a fortuitous jumble of reactions, some of which it instinctively seeks to heighten & prolong, & some of which it instinctively seeks to shorten or lessen. Also, we see that certain courses of action tend to increase its radius of comprehension & degree of specialised organisation (things usually promoting the wished-for reactions, & in general removing the species from a clod-like, unorganised state), while other courses of action tend to exert an opposite effect. Now since man means nothing to the cosmos, it is plan that his only logical goal (a goal whose sole reference is to himself) is simply the achievement of a reasonable equilibrium which shall enhance his likelihood of experiencing the sort of reactions he wishes, & which shall help along his natural impulse to increase his differentiation from unorganised force & matter. This goal can be reached only through teaching individual men how best to keep out of each other's way, & how best to reconcile the various conflicting instincts which a haphazard cosmic drift has placed within the breast of the same person. Here, then, is a practical & imperative system of ethics, resting on the firmest possible foundation & being essentially that taught by Epicurus & Lucretius. It has no need of supernatualism, & indeed has nothing to do with it.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Natalie H. Wooley (2 May 1936), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 240-241
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life , Men , Children , Truth

“Freedom of mind is the real freedom. A person whose mind is not free though he may not be in chains, is a slave, not a free man. One whose mind is not free, though he may not be in prison, is a prisoner and not a free man. One whose mind is not free though alive, is no better than dead. Freedom of mind is the proof of one's existence.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

Political Science for Civil Services Main Examination (2010)

Freedom , Personality , Dead

“It was not until 1869 that I met him Manet again, but this time, we became friends immediately. From the first meeting, he invited me to join him every evening in a café of the 'Batignolles' where he and his friends would gather to talk at the end of a day spent at their studios. I would meet there, Fantin-Latour and Cézanne, Degas - who arrived shortly afterwards from Italy, the art critic Duranty, Emile Zola who was just starting-off in the literary world and a number of others. I would take Sisley, Bazille and Renoir. There was nothing more interesting than these discussions with their perpetual differences of opinion. Our mind and souls were stimulated... One would always leave, all the better immersed, the will stronger, our thinking more defined and clear.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

in Claude Monet par lui-meme – interview by Thiébault-Sisson / translated by Louise McGlone Jacot-Descombes; published in Le Temps newspaper, 26 November 1900
about Édouard Manet, leading artist in Impressionism then, in Paris.
1900 - 1920

World , Art , Soul , Thinking

“You do not need to seek freedom in some distant land, for it exists within your own body, heart, mind, and soul. Illuminated emancipation, freedom, unalloyed and untainted bliss await you, but you must choose to embark on the Inward Journey to discover it.”

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.22

Soul , Freedom , Distant , Heart

“The scale we measure things by is the measure of our own mind.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer

Der Maßstab, den wir an die Dinge legen, ist das Maß unseres eigenen Geistes.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 52.

“The man who dares to live his life with death before his eyes, the man who receives life back bit by bit and lives as though it did not belong to him by right but has been bestowed on him as a gift, the man who has such freedom and peace of mind that he has overcome death in his thoughts — such man believes in eternal life because it is already his, it is a present experience, and he already benefits from its peace and joy. He cannot describe this experience in words. He may not be able to conform his view with the traditional picture of it. But one thing he knows for certain: Something within us does not pass away, something goes on living and working wherever the kingdom of the spirit is present. It is already working and living within us, because in our hearts we have been able to reach life by overcoming death.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Reverence for Life (1969)

Life , Death , Peace , Freedom

“The whole world will smile at you when your heart is peaceful and your mind is clean. When you can smile at yourself, not a single trouble in the world will affect you. When you are sincere to yourself, no one in the world can deceive you.”

Jun Hong Lu (1959) Australian Buddhist leader

Malaysia, (28 August 2017)[citation needed].

World , Peace , Smile , Heart

“Within the last quarter of a century, in America, several sects of curers have appeared under various names and have done notable things in the way of healing ailments without the use of medicines. There are the Mind Cure, the Faith Cure, the Prayer Cure, the Mental Science Cure, and the Christian-Science Cure; and apparently they all do their miracles with the same old, powerful instrument—the patient's imagination. Differing names, but no difference in the process. But they do not give that instrument the credit; each sect claims that its way differs from the ways of the others.

They all achieve some cures, there is no question about it; and the Faith Cure and the Prayer Cure probably do no harm when they do no good, since they do not forbid the patient to help out the cure with medicines if he wants to; but the others bar medicines, and claim ability to cure every conceivable human ailment through the application of their mental forces alone. There would seem to be an element of danger here. It has the look of claiming too much, I think. Public confidence would probably be increased if less were claimed.”

Mark Twain Christian Science

Book I, Ch. 4
Christian Science (1907)

Faith , Way , Confidence , Imagination

“The real reason people are conservatives is that they are attached to the things that they love, and want to preserve them from abuse and decay. They are attached to their family, their friends, their religion, and their immediate environment. They have made a lifelong distinction between the things that nourish and the things that threaten their security and peace of mind.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

"Conservatism and the Conservatory," https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/427945/conservatism-and-conservatory, National Review (December 2015).

Love , People , Family , Peace

“The academic mind, as we know, is sometimes capable of assuming an aggressive attitude. The official mind, on the contrary, is and has to be, expert in the art of self-defence.”

Ronald Fisher (1890–1962) English statistician, evolutionary biologist, geneticist, and eugenicist

Presidential Address to the First Indian Statistical Congress, 1938. Sankhya 4, 14-17.
1930s

Art

“(…) Work on, and the universe will work with you. After all the very idea of doing the right thing comes to you from the unknown. Leave it to the unknown as far as the results go, just go through the necessary movements. You are merely one of the links in the long chain of causation. Fundamentally, all happens in the mind only. When you work for something whole-heartedly and steadily, it happens, for it is the function of the mind to make things happen. (…).”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Work
Source: I am That, P.203.

Idea , Universe

“Many Westerners forget that when the Prophet spoke of four wives as the maximum allowable number, he had in mind a reduction to four as compared to the number then often prevailing; moreover, Mohammed specified that a man should acquire more than one wife only if he could treat them all with equal justice - obviously a difficult feat for even the most diligent man to achieve. In effect, then, the Prophet curtailed the number of wives.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Page 233
Publications, Mission for my Country (1961)

Justice , Forgetting

“It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.”

Thomas Paine book The Age of Reason

1790s, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794)

Lying

“I have this theory about why men kill each other and break things. … Never mind. It's a dumb theory. I was going to say it was all sexual … but everything is sexual … but alcohol.”

Kurt Vonnegut Happy Birthday, Wanda June

"Mildred"
Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970)

Men , Alcohol

“It is, indeed an incredible fact that what the human mind, at its deepest and most profound, perceives as beautiful finds its realization in external nature.… What is intelligible is also beautiful.”

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910–1995) physicist

From a lecture, "Beauty and the Quest for Beauty in Science" given at the International Symposium in recognition of Robert R. Wilson on April 27, 1979 at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Batavia, Illinois.

Beauty , Intelligence , Nature

“Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness; and this truth is in itself so excellent that, even when it dwells on humble and lowly matters, it is still infinitely above uncertainty and lies, disguised in high and lofty discourses; because in our minds, even if lying should be their fifth element, this does not prevent that the truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects, though not of wandering wits. But you who live in dreams are better pleased by the sophistical reasons and frauds of wits in great and uncertain things, than by those reasons which are certain and natural and not so far above us.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

Truth , Dreams , Lying , Fraud

“We gather here in memory of 20 beautiful children and six remarkable adults. They lost their lives in a school that could have been any school in a quiet town full of good and decent people that could be any town in America.
Here in Newtown, I come to offer the love and prayers of a nation. I am very mindful that mere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal your wounded hearts.
I can only hope it helps for you to know that you’re not alone in your grief, that our world, too, has been torn apart, that all across this land of ours, we have wept with you. We’ve pulled our children tight.
And you must know that whatever measure of comfort we can provide, we will provide. Whatever portion of sadness that we can share with you to ease this heavy load, we will gladly bear it. Newtown, you are not alone.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2012, Sandy Hook Prayer Vigil (December 2012)

Love , Children , People , World

“In this connection I call to mind Genesis, chapter xlvii…the pathetic story of the years of plenty and the years of famine in Egypt, and how Joseph, with that opportunity, made a corner in broken hearts, and the crusts of the poor, and human liberty--a corner whereby he took a nation's money all away, to the last penny…then took the nation itself, buying it for bread, man by man, woman by woman, child by child, till all were slaves…and it was a disaster so crushing that its effects have not wholly disappeared from Egypt to-day… Was Joseph establishing a character for his race which would survive long in Egypt? and in time would his name come to be familiarly used to express that character--like Shylock's? It is hardly to be doubted. Let us remember that this was centuries before the Crucifixion.”

Mark Twain book Concerning the Jews

Concerning the Jews (Harper's Magazine, Sept. 1899)

Money , Time , Heart

“He that practiceth showing mercy to him that needeth, will soon cease from covetousness, he who continues in giving to the poor, will soon cease from anger, and will never even be high-minded. For as the physician continually tending wounded persons is easily sobered, beholding human nature in the calamities of others; so we, if we enter upon the work of aiding the poor, shall easily become truly wise, and shall not admire riches, nor deem present things any great matter, but despise them all, and soaring aloft to heaven, shall easily obtain the eternal blessings, through the grace and lovingkindness of our Lord Jesus Christ; to whom, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

John Chrysostom (349–407) important Early Church Father

Homilies on the Gospel of Saint John http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf114.iv.lxxxiii.html, Homily LXXXI

Nature , Christ , Personality , Anger

“Building worlds is not enough for the deeper urging mind; but a loving heart sates the striving spirit.”

Novalis book Blüthenstaub

Fragment No. 91
Blüthenstaub (1798)

Love , World , Heart

“I know that the gentlemen in the enemy camp may think of me however they like. I consider it beneath me to try to change the minds of these gentlemen.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Omitted portion of an interview between Stalin and Emil Ludwig (13 December 1931) http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/research/stalinludwig_missing_eng.html
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

Thinking , Change

“If you think that your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument, rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realize that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called "education". This last is particularly dastardly, since it takes advantage of the defencelessness of immature minds. Unfortunately it is practiced in greater or less degree in the schools of every civilised country.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1950s, Human Society in Ethics and Politics (1954), p. 220

Education , School , Faith , Support

“Superficial knowledge … is hurtful to those who possess true genius; for it necessarily draws them away from their main object, wastes their industry over details and subjects foreign to their needs and natural talent, and lastly does not serve, as they flatter themselves, to prove the breadth of their mind. In all ages there have been men of very moderate intelligence who knew much, and so on the contrary, men of the highest intelligence who knew very little. Ignorance is not lack of intelligence, nor knowledge a proof of genius.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 178.

Men , Age , Intelligence , Nature

“[P]eace of soul implies tranquillity of order, with material things ordered to the body, the body to the soul, the personality to neighbor and to God. Peace of mind is subjective tranquillity — a narrower thing. It requires great moral effort to attain peace of soul, but even those who are indifferent to right and wrong sometimes achieve peace of mind”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

which the Scriptures call "false peace"
Source: Peace of Soul (1949), Ch. 6, p. 112

God , Peace , Soul , Effort

“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!”

Charles Dickens book Hard Times

Bk. I, Ch. 1
Hard Times (1854)

Life , Children , Girl , Boy

“Some more in this convention came from Kentucky to Illinois (instead of going to Missouri), not only to better their conditions, but also to get away from slavery. They have said so to me, and it is understood among us Kentuckians that we don't like it one bit. Now, can we, mindful of the blessings of liberty which the early men of Illinois left to us, refuse a like privilege to the free men who seek to plant Freedom's banner on our Western outposts? Should we not stand by our neighbors who seek to better their conditions in Kansas and Nebraska? Can we as Christian men, and strong and free ourselves, wield the sledge or hold the iron which is to manacle anew an already oppressed race? "Woe unto them," it is written, "that decree unrighteous decrees and that write grievousness which they have prescribed."”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Can we afford to sin any more deeply against human liberty?
From the Speech Delivered Before the First Republican State Convention of Illinois, Held at Bloomington (1856); found in Speeches & Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865 (1894), J. M. Dent & Company, p. 56.
Also quoted by Ida Minerva Tarbell, The Life of Abraham Lincoln: Drawn from Original Sources and Containing Many Speeches, Letters, and Telegrams Hitherto Unpublished, and Illustrated with Many Reproductions from Original Paintings, Photographs, etc, Volume 4 (1902), Lincoln History Society http://lincolnhistoricalsociety.org/; and by William C. Whitney; in The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, v. 2' . (1905) Lapsley, Arthur Brooks, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons
1850s

Men , Freedom , Strong

“Successful men of all the ages have learned to multiply themselves by gathering thought energy into a high potential and using it in the direction of the purpose intended. Every successful man or great genius has three particular qualities in common. The most conspicuous of these is that their minds grow more brilliant as they grow older, instead of less brilliant. Great men’s lives begin at forty, where the mediocre man’s life ends. The genius remains an ever-flowing fountain of creative achievement until the very last breath he draws. The geniuses have learned how to gather thought energy together to use for transforming their conceptions into material forms. The thinking of creative and successful men is never exerted in any direction other that that intended. That is why great men produce a prodigious amount of work, seemingly without effort and without fatigue. The amount of work such men leave to posterity is amazing. When one considers such men of our times as Edison, Henry Ford or Theodore Roosevelt, one will find the three characteristics I have mentioned common to every one of them.”

Walter Russell (1871–1963) American philosopher

The Man who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe

Life , Men , Age , Thinking

Quotes about mind page 8

Quotes about mind
page 8