Quotes about mind
page 80

“We may have learned to fly like birds and swim like fish, but we have forgotten how to live like human beings. It seems we have to relearn that skill. How can we do this? It is only possible if we learn about ourselves. We have to subject ourselves to self-analysis. Why? Because it is not outer space, not the wind, not the ocean, not the seasons, nature or animals that are the cause of this world’s problems, but we human beings—our minds.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

Practice Spiritual Values & Save the World (2013)

World, Nature, Problem, Bird

“Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind.”

George Gaylord Simpson (1902–1984) American paleontologist

George Gaylord Simpson (1967) The Meaning of Evolution, revised edition. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 345.

Nature

“But when an old man dances,
His locks with age are grey.
But he's a child in mind.”

Anacreon (-570–-485 BC) Greek lyric poet, notable for his drinking songs and hymns

Odes, XXXIX. (XXXVII), 3.

Age, Dance

“(…) After all, what is will but steadiness of heart and mind. Given such steadfastness all can be achieved.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Will
Source: I am That, P.119.

Heart

“Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods. Every time you do so you will be certain to see something you have never seen before. Of course it will be a little thing, but do not ignore it. Follow it up, explore around it, and before you know it, something worth thinking about to occupy your mind.”

Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922) scientist and inventor known for his work on the telephone

A Treasury of Inspirational Thoughts (2004) by S.P. Sharma, p. 41.
Disputed

Thinking, Time

“‘By the second half of the nineteenth century, the importance of light and space as both metaphors or, and habitations for, the human self, or “the substance called the mind”, is absolute, especially with Tagore, who, in a letter in 1894 to his niece, would demand, not political freedom … but “more light, more space”.’”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Clearing a Space (2008)

Freedom, Light

“Drugs and terrorism are both mind-altering and deadly.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2015

“Drill in exact translation is an excellent way of disposing the mind against that looseness and exaggeration with which the sensationalists have corrupted our world. If schools of journalism knew their business, they would graduate no one who could not render the Greek poets.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

“The Power of the Word,” p. 53.
Language is Sermonic (1970)

World, School, Way, Business

“Was never eie did see that face,
Was never eare did heare that tong,
Was never minde did minde his grace,
That ever thought the travell long;
But eies and eares and ev'ry thought
Were with his sweete perfections caught.”

Mathew Roydon (1583–1622) English poet

An Elegie; or Friend's Passion for his Astrophill, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Travel, Perfection

“The force that makes the winter grow
Its feathered hexagons of snow,
and drives the bee to match at home
Their calculated honeycomb,
Is abacus and rose combined.

An icy sweetness fills my mind,
A sense that under thing and wing
Lies, taut yet living, coiled, the spring.”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

Part 4: "The Abacus and the Rose" (fin)
Science and Human Values (1956, 1965)

Home, Spring, Sense, Bee

“Hold back your mind from pride, for pride comes only from ignorance. The man who does not know thinks that he is great, that he has done this or that great thing; the wise man knows that only God is great, that all good work is done by God alone.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

§ III
1910s, At the Feet of the Master (1911)

God, Thinking

“A planet is the cradle of mind, but one cannot live in a cradle forever.”

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935) Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory

From a letter written in 1911 Usually cited as Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever. http://web.archive.org/web/20060421175318/http://www.uranos.eu.org/biogr/ciolke.html

“We debase the richness of both nature and our own minds if we view the great pageant of our intellectual history as a compendium of new information leading from primal superstition to final exactitude. We know that the sun is hub of our little corner of the universe, and that ties of genealogy connect all living things on our planet, because these theories assemble and explain so much otherwise disparate and unrelated information—not because Galileo trained his telescope on the moons of Jupiter or because Darwin took a ride on a Galápagos tortoise.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Eight Little Piggies

"A Foot Soldier for Evolution", p. 441
Eight Little Piggies (1993)

History, Nature, Universe, Sun

“Men are the dominant sign-using animals. Animals other than man do, of course, respond to certain things as signs of something else, but such signs do not attain the complexity and elaboration which is found in human speech, writing, art, testing devices, medical diagnosis, and signaling instruments. Science and signs are inseparably interconnected, since science both presents men with more reliable signs and embodies its results is systems of signs. Human civilization is dependent upon signs and systems of signs, and the human mind is inseparable from the functioning of signs - if indeed mentality is not to be identified with such functioning.”

Charles W. Morris (1903–1979) American philosopher

Source: "Foundations of the Theory of Signs," 1938, p. 1 (1971:17), Lead paragraph first chapter

Men, Art, Science, Animals

“I don't like that word 'finish'. When something is finished, that means it's dead, doesn't it? I believe in everlastingness. I never finish a painting – I just stop working on it for a while. I like painting because it's something I never come to the end of. Sometimes I paint a picture, then I paint it all out. Sometimes I'm working on fifteen or twenty pictures at the same time. I do that because I want to – because I like to change my mind so often. The thing to do is always to keep starting to paint, never finishing painting.”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

quote of 1948
1942 - 1948
Source: Movements in art since 1945, Edward Lucie-Smith, Thames and Hudson 1975, p 32

Quotes, Change, Time, Painting

“For his Spiritual Church Joachim of Fiore foresaw the continuance of the Papacy (much modified), but the bishops were to disappear. If I think at all of the Church to come, then I hope and pray above all for a revival, indeed resurrection of the episcopal office. To my mind it is still a prisoner of its almost thousand-year long disastrous fusion with temporal power. Strange - only a few years ago I thought the Emperor Otto I just marvellous and was full of admiration for his genius in raising the bishops to Reichsfürsten - princes of the realm - thus securing an unshakeable foundation for his Empire. Politically it was a brilliant decision… Yet I can imagine no way in which a mortal enemy of the Church in all craft and cunning could have fastened a worse fate upon her… For how often was their charismatic office as pastors overshadowed, indeed frequently rendered impossible, by their temporal mission and worldly achievements..”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights Letters 1951-59.

Fate, Hope, Way, Imagination

“My friends tell me that I have a tendency to point out problems without offering solutions, but they never tell me what I should do about it. In one chapter after another, I've described the ways in which imagination fails to provide us with accurate previews of our emotional futures. I’ve claimed that when we imagine our futures we tend to fill in, leave out, and take little account of how differently we will think about the future once we actually get there. I’ve claimed that neither personal experience nor cultural wisdom compensates for imagination’s shortcomings. I’ve so thoroughly marinated you in the foibles, biases, errors, and mistakes of the human mind that you may wonder how anyone ever manages to make toast without buttering their kneecaps. If so, you will be heartened to learn that there is a simple method by which anyone can make strikingly accurate predictions about how they will feel in the future. But you may be disheartened to learn that, by and large, no one wants to use it.”

Daniel T. Gilbert book Stumbling on Happiness

Source: Stumbling on Happiness, 2006, p. 223

Wisdom, Way, Error, Feeling

“My mind has touched the farthest horizons of mortal imagination and reaches ever outward to embrace infinity. There is no knowledge beyond my comprehension, no art or skill upon this entire planet that lies beyond the mastery of my hand. And yet, like Faust, I look in vain, I learn in vain… For as long as I love, no woman will ever look on me in love.”

Susan Kay Phantom

Erik (p. 303)
Phantom (1990)

Love, Art, Imagination, Knowledge

“It is the police who are our main protection against terrorism and it is to the police that we must give our sustenance and support. It cannot be without reluctance that we contemplate powers of the kind proposed in the Bill, involving as they must some encroachment—limited but real—on the liberties of individual citizens. Few things would provide a more gratifying victory to the terrorists than for this country to undermine its traditional freedoms in the very process of countering the enemies of those freedoms. This we must keep in mind not only today but in the future as we persevere in what may not be a short struggle to eradicate terrorism from this country…the Bill proposes strengthened powers in four broad areas. First, it proscribes the IRA and makes display of support for it illegal. Second, the Bill makes it possible to make exclusion orders against persons who are involved in terrorism. Third, the Bill gives the police wide powers to arrest and detain, within limits, suspected terrorists. Fourth, it gives the police powers to carry out a security check on all travellers entering and leaving Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”

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

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1974/nov/28/prevention-of-terrorism-temporary in the House of Commons introducing the Prevention of Terrorism Act (28 November 1974) 1970s

Travel, Support, Freedom, Future

“My eye came to rest on the delicate convolutions of her ear-those intricate, perfect ears. The thought passed through my mind: "No, those ears were not created by any chance coming together of atoms in nature (the Communist view). They could have been created only by immense design."”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

Source: Witness (1952), p. 16

Nature, Chance, Perfection

“If we had strength and faith enough to trust ourselves entirely to God, and follow Him simply wherever He should lead us, we should have no need of any great effort of mind to reach perfection.”

François Fénelon (1651–1715) Catholic bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 240.

God, Faith, Effort, Perfection

“Hard-hearted minds relent and rigor's tears abound,
And envy strangely rues his end, in whom no fault was found.
Knowledge her light hath lost, valor hath slain her knight,
Sidney is dead, dead is my friend, dead is the world's delight.”

Philip Sidney (1554–1586) English diplomat

Fulke Greville, Epitaph on Sir Philip Sidney.
Criticism

World, Knowledge, Tear, Light

“What grace is to the body, good sense is to the mind.”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

La bonne grâce est au corps ce que le bon sens est à l'esprit.
Maxim 67.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Sense

“When everything on the ship was being turned upside down, the music remained the same. In the midst of mind-jarring abnormality, it was the one thing that retained its familiarity.”

Steve Turner (1949) British writer

Source: The Band That Played On (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 194

Music

“Of course, I had to own that he was right; I didn't feel much regret for what I'd done. Still, to my mind, he overdid it, and I'd have liked to have a chance of explaining to him, in a quite friendly, almost affectionate way, that I have never been able to really regret anything in all my life. I've always been far too much absorbed in the present moment, or the immediate future, to think back.”

Albert Camus book The Stranger

The Stranger (1942)

Life, Way, Feeling, Thinking

“The Court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our Nation's moral standards—and in the course of discharging that awesome responsibility purports to take guidance from the views of foreign courts and legislatures. Because I do not believe that the meaning of our Eighth Amendment, any more than the meaning of other provisions of our Constitution, should be determined by the subjective views of five Members of this Court and like-minded foreigners, I dissent. Words have no meaning if the views of less than 50 percent of death penalty States can constitute a national consensus. Our previous cases have required overwhelming opposition to a challenged practice, generally over a long period of time.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

On executing minors: Roper v. Simmons (2005) (dissenting).
2000s

Death, Penalty, Time

“.. there is a real Dada strain in the minds of the New York School of abstract painters that has emerged in the last decade.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

The Dada Painters and Poets, Schultz, Wittenborn, New York 1951, p. xiii
1950s

School

“To forget oneself totally, one's mind should keep awake at every moment. A mind that has forgotten the past and the future, that is awake to the now, to the present, expresses the highest concentration of intelligence. It is alert, it is watchful, it is inspired. The actions of a man who has such a mind are exceptionally creative and perfect. Verily to forget oneself totally, is to be in perfection.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

Intelligence, Past, Future, Perfection

“Can the mind become completely still without coercion, without compulsion, without discipline?”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

7th Public Discussion, Saanen, Switzerland (10 August 1971)
1970s

“The love of fame, as it enters at times into his mind, is only another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority — that of time.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

Lectures on the English Poets http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16209/16209.txt (1818), Lecture VIII, "On the Living Poets"

Love, Time

“It is by presence of mind in untried emergencies that the native metal of a man is tested.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

Abraham Lincoln http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/1lncn10h.htm (1864)

“The thought definitely crosses my mind, but for me, it has always been about reading great scripts and finding things I relate to, and this was one of those. As an actor, I think you always want your work to do well, and I think that’s hopefully what’s going to happen. Hopefully this movie does turn out as great as everyone wants it to be, and hopefully we don’t disappoint anyone.”

Liam Hemsworth (1990) Australian actor

On risks of becoming famous after The Hunger Games. — November 1, 2012, Q&A: Liam Hemsworth on The Hunger Games and Losing Weight for His Role, Krista Smith, November 8, 2011, Vanity Fair, Conde Nast http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/11/Liam-Hunger-Games-Post,

Disappointment, Thinking, Reading

“What do we mean by “understanding” something? We can imagine that this complicated array of moving things which constitutes “the world” is something like a great chess game being played by the gods, and we are observers of the game. We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics. Even if we knew every rule, however, we might not be able to understand why a particular move is made in the game, merely because it is too complicated and our minds are limited. If you play chess you must know that it is easy to learn all the rules, and yet it is often very hard to select the best move or to understand why a player moves as he does. So it is in nature, only much more so.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

volume I; lecture 2, "Basic Physics"; section 2-1, "Introduction"; p. 2-1
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)

God, World, Imagination, Game

“You have reduced the number of wars – to earn all the bigger profits in peace, to intensify to the utmost the enmity between individuals, the ignominious war of competition! When have you done anything out of pure humanity, from consciousness of the futility of the opposition between the general and the individual interest? When have you been moral without being interested, without harbouring at the back of your mind immoral, egoistical motives?”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

Ihr habt ... die Kriege vermindert, um im Frieden desto mehr zu verdienen, um die Feindschaft der einzelnen, den ehrlosen Krieg der Konkurrenz, auf die höchste Spitze zu treiben!
Wo habt ihr etwas aus reiner Humanität, aus dem Bewußtsein der Nichtigkeit des Gegensatzes zwischen dem allgemeinen und individuellen Interesse getan? Wo seid ihr sittlich gewesen, ohne interessiert zu sein, ohne unsittliche, egoistische Motive im Hintergrund zu hegen?
Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy (1844)

War, Peace, Motivation

“My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my "Blackness" than ever before. I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my White professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong. Regardless of the circumstances under which I interact with Whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be Black first and a student second.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

" Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community http://pt.scribd.com/doc/2305083/Princeton-Educated-Blacks-and-the-Black-Community", senior thesis, Princeton University (1985), p. 14-15 quoted in "Michelle Obama thesis was on racial divide" by Jeffrey Ressner at Politico.com (23 February 2008) http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=42FC5818-3048-5C12-005E33B3C0F4E64B 1980s

Feeling

“The more a man thinks the better adapted he becomes to thinking, and education is nothing if it is not the methodical creation of the habit of thinking. Precisely. Theoretically, education is a mental training aiming at greater intellectual elasticity, but the question is whether education does not often strain, instead of train, a mind.”

Ernest Dimnet (1866–1954) French writer

Source: The Art of Thinking (1928), p. 61

Education, Question, Thinking, Training

“If our universe is one of many, unlike others in containing observers like ourselves, there is no need to posit a designer. Most universes will be too chaotic to allow the emergence of life or mind. In that case, the fact that humans exist in this universe needs no special explanation”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

Sweet Morality (p. 222)
Source: The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death (2011)

Life, Universe

“My dear Zola, - I am making up my mind to hold a private show. I have at least two score pictures to exhibit. I've already already been offered a site in a very good location near the Champ de Mars. I am going to stake the lot and seconded by men like yourself, am hopeful of success. See you soon. Cordially, yours ever, All of us here are delighted with your article, and I am instructed to send you thanks.”

Edouard Manet (1832–1883) French painter

Quote of Manet's letter to Zola, Wednesday, 2 January 1867; as quoted on: SCRIBD - 'Manet's letters' https://www.scribd.com/document/344176445/manets-letters-worksheet 1850 - 1875

Men, Hope, Success

“It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Variants: It should be noted that the games of children are not games, and must be considered as their most serious actions.
For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.
Book I, Ch. 23
Attributed

Children, Game

“The repulsion, the anxiety, the wish for removal and the anger at pain and the means thereof, which stick in the mind in consequence of feeling of pain, in the case of him who has felt the pain, preceded by a remembrance of the pain, is aversion.”

Vyasa central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions

In p. 104.
Sources, The Yoga Darsana Of Patanjali With The Sankhya Pravacana Commentary Of Vyasa

Pain, Feeling, Anger

“The concept of absolute, hence (or whence) springs, in the moral field, the moral laws or norms, represent, in the field of knowledge, the principle of identity, which is the fundamental law of the thought; norms of logic springs from it, that govern the thought (or mind) in the field of science.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

"Le concept de l'absolu, d'où découlent, dans le domaine moral, les lois ou normes morales, constitue, le principe d'identité, qui est la loi fondamentale de la pensée; il en découle les normes logiques qui régissent la pensée dans le domaine de la science."
Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 59 [Hélène Claparède-Spir had underlined - the translator]

Law, Spring, Knowledge, Science

“With both Jeet and Prosenjit venturing into television, things are bound to hot up. We are hoping that things change for better now. It’s a bit like Shah Rukh Khan hosting Kaun Banega Crorepati and Salman Khan hosting Dus ka Dum. The shows have been evidently designed keeping both these star’s image in mind.”

Arin Paul (1980) Indian film director

Interview in Indian Express on Reality Shows http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/clash-of-the-titans/345322/ (2008)

Hope, Star, Change

“Even after making up one's mind to the sacrifices I had decided upon, there is always left a trace of envy for those who have triumphed in the melancholy struggle for literary supremacy.”

Paul Bourget (1852–1935) French writer

The Age for Love

Envy

“As I inched sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County school system, I could not help receiving the impression that I was being cheated out of something. Out of what I knew not, yet I did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactly what the state had in mind for me.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Pt. 1, ch. 4
Jean Louise (Scout) Finch
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

School, Help, Cheating

“The environment is located in the mind of the actor and is imposed by him on experience in order to make that experience more meaningful. It is seldom dawns on organizational theorists to look for environments inside of heads rather than outside of them.”

Karl E. Weick (1936) Organisational psychologist

Karl. E. Weick (1977, p. 273), as cited in: James R. Taylor, Elizabeth J. Van Ever. The Emergent Organization: Communication As Its Site and Surface. (1999), p. 285
1970s

“Someone says, "Don't you think that Jesus is a crutch?" Well, maybe he is, but when you're crippled, that's not too bad. Some one else say, "Don't you think you're rather closed-minded?" I say, "Yeah, but I can afford to be, I'm right."”

Mike Warnke (1946) Evangelical Christian minister

Alive (album) (1975)

Thinking

“Moria and stultitia are both rendered nowadays as 'folly', but both have far stronger senses than folly has now. They imply derangement of mind, madness, mania. Such are the defects attributed to Christians by the worldly-wise. And vice-versa.”

Michael Andrew Screech (1926–2018)

Source: Laughter at the Foot of the Cross (1998), p. 73

Sense, Madness

“Religion in terms of “personal experience is an independent functioning of the human mind, something unique, possessing and autonomous character. It is something inward and personal which unifies all values and organizes all experiences. It is the reaction to the whole of man to the whole of reality. It may be called spiritual life, as distinct from a merely intellectual or moral or aesthetic activity or a combination of them.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Life, Religion, Reality, Personality

“So a lioness that has newly whelped, beset by Numidian hunters in her cruel den, stands upright over her young, gnashing her teeth in grim and piteous wise, her mind in doubt; she could disrupt the groups and break their weapons with her bite, but love for her offspring binds her cruel heart and from the midst of her fury she looks round at her cubs.”
Ut lea, quam saeuo fetam pressere cubili venantes Numidae, natos erecta superstat, mente sub incerta torvum ac miserabile frendens; illa quidem turbare globos et frangere morsu tela queat, sed prolis amor crudelia vincit pectora, et a media catulos circumspicit ira.

Statius book Thebaid

Source: Thebaid, Book X, Line 414

Love, Heart

“This is continuity, you travel, perhaps in your mind, a paper world real, God reeling up and down landscapes and buildings, knocks down, opens new roads, doesn’t like it, changes again, but there isn’t a seam, His world is onefold, and you perceive neither seam nor contradiction, continuity only.”

Dimitris Lyacos (1966) Greek writer

Source: Poena Damni Z213: Exit, Shoestring Press, 2010.

God, World, Travel, Change

“Our bodies hold our minds hostage to their whims and rhythms.”

Alain de Botton book The Consolations of Philosophy

Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), Chapter IV, Consolation For Inadequacy, p. 122.

“The representation of an object, in itself (the objectivity as the aim of the representation), is something that has nothing to do with art, although the use of representation in a work of art does not rule out the possibility of its being of a high artistic order. For the Suprematist, therefore, the proper means is the one that provides the fullest expression of pure feeling and ignores the habitually accepted object. The object in itself is meaningless to him; and the ideas of the conscious mind are worthless. Feeling is the decisive factor.... and thus art arrives at non-objective representation – at Suprematism.”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

Quote of Malevich, 1927 in Artists on Art; from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, pp. 452
1921 - 1930

Art, Feeling, Idea, Decision

“She dealt with moral problems the way a cleaver deals with meat: and in this case she had made up her mind.”

James Joyce book Dubliners

"The Boarding House"
Dubliners (1914)

Way, Problem

“But let the working man be on his guard against another danger. We live at a time when there is a disposition to think that the Government ought to do this and that and that the Government ought to do everything. There are things which the Government ought to do, I have no doubt. In former periods the Government have neglected much, and possibly even now they neglect something; but there is a danger on the other side. If the Government takes into its hands that which the man ought to do for himself it will inflict upon him greater mischiefs than all the benefits he will have received or all the advantages that would accrue from them. The essence of the whole thing is that the spirit of self-reliance, the spirit of true and genuine manly independence, should be preserved in the minds of the people, in the minds of the masses of the people, in the mind of every member of the class. If he loses his self-denial, if he learns to live in a craven dependence upon wealthier people rather than upon himself, you may depend upon it he incurs mischief for which no compensation can be made.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at the opening of the Reading and Recreation Rooms erected by the Saltney Literary Institute at Saltney in Chesire (26 October 1889), as quoted in "Mr. Gladstone On The Working Classes" in The Times (28 October 1889), p. 8
1880s

People, Thinking, Learning, Time

“I forgot that love existed, troubled in my mind.
Heartache after heartache, worried all the time.
I forgot that love existed
Then I saw the light
Everyone around me make everything alright.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

I Forgot That Love Existed
Song lyrics, Poetic Champions Compose (1987)

Love, Light, Time

“Since it is always the same person whose mind thinks, wills, and judges, the autonomous nature of these activities has created great difficulties. Reason’s inability to move the will, plus the fact that thinking can only “understand” what is past what neither remove it nor “rejuvenate it” … have led to the various doctrines asserting the mind’s impotence and the force of the irrational, in brief to Hume’s famous dictum that “Reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions,” that is, to a rather simple-minded reversal of the Platonic notion of reason’s uncontested rulership in the household of the soul. What is so remarkable in all these theories and doctrines is their implicit monism, the claim that behind the obvious multiplicity of the world’s appearances and, even more pertinently to our context, behind the obvious plurality of man’s faculties and abilities, there must exist a oneness — the old hen pan, “the all is one””

Hannah Arendt book The Life of the Mind

either a single source or a single ruler.
Source: The Life of the Mind (1971/1978), p. 70.

World, Soul, Understanding, Nature

“A mind, lean in its own language. In others, it gets fat.”

Elias Canetti (1905–1994) Bulgarian-born Swiss and British jewish modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer

J. Agee, trans. (1989), p. 48
Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock] (1987)

“I have such eagerness of hope
To benefit my kind;
And feel as if immortal power
Were given to my mind.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Source: The Venetian Bracelet (1829), Lines of Life

Hope, Feeling

“I enjoy gambling, I find ample opportunity in gambling to engage my mind and study.”

Laxmi Prasad Devkota (1909–1959) Nepali poet

जूवा (Gambling)

Study

“Cleanliness, Contentment, Purificatory Action, Study and the making of Ishvara, the motive of all actions, are observances.
Of these Cleanliness is external when brought about by earth and water etc., and consists in the eating of pure things, etc. It is internal when it consists in the washing away of impurities of the mind.
Contentment is the absence of desire to secure more of the necessities of life than one already processes.
Contentment is the absence of desire to secure more of the necessities of life than one already possesses…”

Vyasa central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions

In p. 163.
Sources, The Yoga Darsana Of Patanjali With The Sankhya Pravacana Commentary Of Vyasa

Life, Motivation, Study, Water

“I used to look in my mind for the unwritten page
if my mind was empty enough I could see it
I didn't paint the plane
I just drew this horizontal line
Then I found out about all the other lines
But I realized what I liked was the horizontal line
Then I painted the two rectangles
correct composition
if they're just right”

Agnes Martin (1912–2004) American artist

1970's, The Untroubled Mind', 1971

Painting

“The focus of prayer is not the self. … It is the momentary disregard of our personal concerns, the absence of self-centered thoughts, which constitute the art of prayer. Feeling becomes prayer in the moment in which we forget ourselves and become aware of God. … Thus, in beseeching Him for bread, there is one instant, at least, in which our mind is directed neither to our hunger nor to food, but to His mercy. This instant is prayer. We start with a personal concern and live to feel the utmost.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

As quoted in Judaism (1998) by Arthur Hertzberg, p. 300
Variant: "It is the momentary disregard of our personal concerns, the absence of self-centered thoughts, which constitute the act of prayer."

Hunger, God, Food, Art

“There are antibiotic ointments that aid in the healing of external wounds. Similarly, there are many different kinds of medication available to treat diseases of our internal organs, but there is only one medicine that can heal the wounds of our mind. This medicine is pure love. In order to heal the mental and emotional wounds inflicted upon the victims of human trafficking, we need to care for them with selfless love.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

From Amritanandamayi's Speech Against Human Trafficking and Slavery at the Vatican (2014)

Love, Disease

“As he silently approached the last float, a latticework ball of reeds, he offered an unspoken prayer to He Who Always Steps on Sand that even now the little bottom-walkers were pushing and shoving their way into the cage below. Because of his unusual education, which included a year living on Perdruin—unheard of for a Wrannaman—Tiamak did not really believe in He Who Always Steps on Sand anymore, but he still held a fondness for him, such as might be felt for a senile grandfather who often tumbled down from the house, but once brought nuts and carved toys. Besides, it never hurt to pray, even if one did not believe in the object of prayer. It helped to compose the mind, and, at the very least, it impressed others.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 28, “Drums of Ice” (p. 447).

Education, Way, Help, Hurt

“An errant ray from the immortal Mind
Accepted the earth's blindness and became
Our human thought, servant of Ignorance.
An exile, labourer on this unsure globe
Captured and driven in Life's nescient grasp,
Hampered by obscure cell and treacherous nerve,
It dreams of happier states and nobler powers,
The natural privilege of unfallen gods,
Recalling still its old lost sovereignty.
Amidst earth's mist and fog and mud and stone
It still remembers its exalted sphere
And the high city of its splendid birth.”

Sri Aurobindo book Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol

Savitri (1918-1950), Book Two : The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds

Life, God, Dreams, Birth

“If you really want to know, I'd rather not have been born at all. I find life very tiring. The thing's done now, of course, and I can’t alter it. But there will always be this regret at the back of my mind, I shall never quite be able to get rid of it, and it will spoil everything. The thing to do now is to grow old quickly, to eat up the years as fast as possible, looking neither right nor left.”

J. M. G. Le Clézio book La fièvre

La fièvre (1965)

Life

“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.”

L. P. Jacks (1860–1955) British educator, philosopher, and Unitarian minister

Misattributed to Chateaubriand on the internet and even some recently published books, this statement actually originated with L. P. Jacks in Education through Recreation (1932)
Misattributed

Education, Art, Appearance, Drawing

“However distressed and disillusioned, the Indians will behave as they always have -- with the same patience, fortitude and indomitable spirit that their forefathers showed in the long night of the Girmit' -- With a mind without fear and head held high.”

Vijay R. Singh (1931–2006) Fijian politician

Speaking Out (2006)

Fear, Patience, Night

“What an astounding thing is the voice! By what miracle is the hot magma of the earth transformed into that which we call speech? If out of clay such an abstract medium as words can be shaped what is to hinder us from leaving our bodies at will and taking up our abode on other planets or between the planets? What is to prevent us from rearranging all life, atomic, molecular, corporeal, stellar, diving? Who or what is powerful enough to eradicate this miraculous leaven which we bear within us like a seed and which, after we have embraced in our mind all the universe, is nothing more than a seed — since to say universe is as easy as to say seed, and we have yet to say greater things, things beyond saying, things limitless and inconceivable, things which no trick of language can encompass.”

Henry Miller book The Colossus of Maroussi

The Colossus of Maroussi (1941)

Life, Universe

“In dealing with our military problems there is one principle that is exceedingly important. Our institutions are founded not on military power but on civil authority. We are irrevocably committed to the theory of a government by the people. We have our constitutions and our laws, our executives, our legislatures, and our courts, but ultimately we are governed by public opinion. Our forefathers had seen so much of militarism, and suffered so much from it, that they desired to banish it forever. They believed and declared in at least one of their State constitutions that the military power should be subordinate to and governed by the civil authority. It is for this reason that any organization of men in the military service bent on inflaming the public mind for the purpose of forcing Government action through the pressure of public opinion is an exceedingly dangerous undertaking and precedent. This is so whatever form it might take, whether it be for the purpose of influencing the Executive, the legislature, or the heads of departments. It is for the civil authority to determine what appropriations shall be granted, what appointments shall be made, and what rules shall be adopted for the conduct of its armed forces. Whenever the military power starts dictating to the civil authority, by whatsoever means adopted, the liberties of the country are beginning to end. National defense should at all times be supported, but any form of militarism should be resisted.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

Men, People, Law, Support

“ Every individual word in a passage or poetry can no more be said to denote some specific referent than does every brush mark, every line in a painting have its counterpart in reality. The writer or speaker does not communicate his thoughts to us; he communicates a representation for carrying out, this function under the severe discipline of using the only materials he has, sound and gesture. Speech is like painting, a representation made out of given materials -- sound or paint. The function of speech is to stimulate and set up thoughts in us having correspondence with the speaker's desires; he has then communicated with us. But he has not transmitted a copy of his thoughts, a photograph, but only a stream of speech -- a substitute made from the unpromising material of sound. The artist, the sculptor, the caricaturist, the composer are akin in this [fact that they have not transmitted a copy of their thoughts], that they express (make representations of) their thoughts using chosen, limited materials. They make the "best" representations, within these self-imposed constraints. A child who builds models of a house, or a train, using only a few colored bricks, is essentially engaged in the same creative task.* Metaphors can play a most forceful role, by importing ideas through a vehicle language, setting up what are purely linguistic associations (we speak of "heavy burden of taxation," "being in a rut"). The imported concepts are, to some extent, artificial in their contexts, and they are by no means universal among different cultures. For instance, the concepts of cleanliness and washing are used within Christendom to imply "freedom from sin." We Westerners speak of the mind's eye, but this idea is unknown amongst the Chinese. that is, we are looking at it with the eyes of our English-speaking culture. A grammar book may help us to decipher the text more thoroughly, and help us comprehend something of the language structure, but we may never fully understand if we are not bred in the culture and society that has modeled and shaped the language. (p. 74)”

Colin Cherry (1914–1979) British scientist

See Gombrich in reference 348
On Human Communication (1957), Language: Science and Aesthetics

Books, Color, Communication, Idea

“Edie thought Joan was the most intelligent girl she had ever met. She had an independent mind, always questioning what anyone said, including her teachers at Barnard. In one of her marginal notes in her copy of Marx's Capital and Other Writings, there are echoes of Burroughs's thinking: "Maybe Marxism is dynamic and optimistic, and Freudianism is not. Is one more serviceable than the other? Why does it always have to be either/or?”

Joan Vollmer (1923–1951) Common-law wife of William S. Burroughs

Ted Morgan, Literary Outlaw, discusses Edie Parker's impression of Joan Vollmer:
About

Girl, Intelligence, Question, Thinking

“The wise will determine from the gravity of the case; the irritable from sensibility to oppression; the high-minded from disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

“From my point of view, he can be called a remarkable man who stands out from those around him by the resourcefulness of his mind, and who knows how to be restrained in the manifestations which proceed from his nature, at the same time conducting himself justly and tolerantly towards the weaknesses of others.”

G. I. Gurdjieff (1866–1949) influential spiritual teacher, Armenian philosopher, composer and writer

All and Everything: Meetings with Remarkable Men (1963)

Nature, Time

“Not body enough to cover his mind decently with; his intellect is improperly exposed.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

Vol. I, ch. 9
Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

“At any rate, it would detract sadly from the richness of the game if deduction of character from a player's style was a forbidden pursuit, for undoubtedly the main reason why cricketers are remembered for years, for decades, after the heroes of other sports are forgotten is that they set the impress of character, apart from technical batting or bowling, on the minds of those who watched them, and whether that cricket-character falsely represented the real man is, in the last analysis, unimportant.”

Dudley Carew (1903–1981) English journalist, writer, poet and film critic

To the Wicket (1946)

Game, Sport, Falseness

“I wanted to photograph this subject because the signs’ shrieking blatancy literally cried out for a visual record. To my mind the faded, yellowing paper and the red paint were not particularly paint, able. In black and white the signs shouted, clamored for attention, in visual anarchy. At the same time, the shrewd business sense which plastered them solid over the entire window area produced, as it were by chance, an esthetic by-product: the whole has homogeneity and variety of texture, simultaneously, which give the picture interest.”

Berenice Abbott (1898–1991) American photographer

New Guide to Better Photography, 1953.

Business, Sense, Chance, Time

“Science is a cooperative enterprise, spanning the generations. It's the passing of a torch from teacher, to student, to teacher. A community of minds reaching back to antiquity and forward to the stars. (From the first Cosmos: ASO episode, Standing Up in the Milky Way.)”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014)

Way, Star, Communication, Teachers

“The enthronement of Christ over the minds of men is steadily going forward. His kingdom embraces the princes in the realm of mind. It embraces the nations of highest civilization. They are all beneath the cross. It is maintained by simple authority. Other mental monarchs rule by logic; Christ's word is law — it is satisfying to His subjects. His truth in the handsof His disciples, like the bread He broke upon the mountains, is an ample supply for the millions that gather at His table.”

Edward Thomson (1810–1870) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 79.

Men, Truth, Law, Mountain

“The Imamah (religious leadership) and ummah (religious community) shed light on…the principle of progress [which society should strive towards], of reforming the relations of society, ideology, belief, life, and the pulling and driving of society and the souls, thoughts, and minds that make up this society to the best possible form. The ummah is not a society where human individuals feel a stagnant form of confort and happiness, or feel a free, carelss sense of irresponsibility and make static comfort the goal of life.”

Ali Shariati (1933–1977) Iranian academic and activist

On the Role of Leadership in the West vs Role of Leadership in Shi'ism (date of speech unknown). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0evSkdzXF_4
Speeches: On Religious Government and Islamic Leadership

Life, Happiness, Feeling, Soul

“I have never known any man who could do such ample justice to his best thoughts in colloquial discussion. His perfect command over his great mental resources, the terseness and expressiveness of his language and the moral earnestness as well as intellectual force of his delivery, made him one of the most striking of all argumentative conversers: and he was full of anecdote, a hearty laugher, and, when with people whom he liked, a most lively and amusing companion. It was not solely, or even chiefly, in diffusing his merely intellectual convictions that his power showed itself: it was still more through the influence of a quality, of which I have only since learnt to appreciate the extreme rarity: that exalted public spirit, and regard above all things to the good of the whole, which warmed into life and activity every germ of similar virtue that existed in the minds he came in contact with: the desire he made them feel for his approbation, the shame at his disapproval; the moral support which his conversation and his very existence gave to those who were aiming to the same objects, and the encouragement he afforded to the fainthearted or desponding among them, by the firm confidence which (though the reverse of sanguine as to the results to be expected in any one particular case) he always felt in the power of reason, the general progress of improvement, and the good which individuals could do by judicious effort.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/101/mode/1up pp. 101-102

Life, People, Justice, Feeling

“I got my feet on the ground and I don't go to sleep to dream;
You've got your head in the clouds and you're not at all what you seem.
This mind, this body and this voice cannot be stifled by your deviant ways.
So don't forget what I told you, don't come around, I got my own hell to raise.”

Fiona Apple (1977) singer-songwriter, musician

Sleep to Dream
Song lyrics, Tidal (1996)

Dreams, Way, Hell, Sleep

“My view of university training is to unsettle the minds of young men, to widen their horizons, to inflame their intellects. It is not a hardening, or settling process. Education is not to teach men facts, theories, or laws; it is not to reform them, or amuse them, or to make them expert technicians in any field; it is to teach them to think, to think straight if possible; but to think always for themselves.”

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

Address to the University of Chicago graduating class of 1929

Men, Education, Law, Thinking

“O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

"No Worst, There Is None", lines 9 -15
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Life, Death, Mountain, Sleep

“I don't mind technique… I can be shameless. I have a long career at this. But when everything is a short con, then there's never another short con. Because you need trust, and you've destroyed it.”

Mike Murphy (political consultant) (1962) American political consultant

As quoted in "Debriefing Mike Murphy" https://www.weeklystandard.com/matt-labash/debriefing-mike-murphy (18 March 2016), by Matt Labash, The Weekly Standard 2010s