Quotes about mind
page 9

“The merest schoolgirl [school girl, ] when she falls in love, has Shakespeare or Keats to speak her mind for her; but let a sufferer [try to] describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Mrs Dalloway (1925)

Love, Pain, School, Girl

“I have never read Max Weber and do not know how he has arrived at the conclusion that “more tribals joined the Hindu mainstream as a result of the Muslim shock than the number of Hindus who were converted to Islam”. Perhaps he had in mind the people of Assam whom Bakhtyar Khalji and a few other Muslim invaders tried to subjugate, or the hill people all over our northern borders whom Muhammad Tughlaq tried to conquer but failed, or the Gonds who fought Akbar under Maharani Durgavati, or the Bhils who fought for freedom under Maharana Pratap, or the Mavlas who joined Shivaji at a later date. But the very fact that these so-called “tribals” fought spontaneously against the Muslim marauders rather than walk over to the winning side goes to prove that they shared a common culture with the rest of the natives.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India

The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1994)

People, Freedom, Reading

“The dreary alternative of agnosticism, which the young students are taught to accept as the final word of science on the grave mysteries of life and thought, and man’s hopes of personal communion with God are laughed away to make room for an inane faith in evolution and the law of collective development and progress…. Hindu students especially need the strengthening influence which faith in God, and in Conscience as His voice in the human heart alone, can give. The national mind can not live in agnosticism. The experiment was tried once on a large scale by the greatest moral teacher of this or any other age. The failure of Buddhism is a warning that such teaching can have no hold on the national thought.”

Mahadev Govind Ranade (1842–1901) Indian scholar, social reformer and author

Religion had important place in his life is indicated in his admonishing Professor Selby (also a professor in the Deccan College) notes on a published ”Notes of Lectures on Butelr’s Anaology and Sermons" quoted in pages=105-106

Life, God, Age, Faith

“Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture — a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees — very gradually — I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye for ever.”

Edgar Allan Poe book The Tell-Tale Heart

The Tell-Tale Heart (1843)

Love, Life, Thinking, Passion

“I have been accused of a habit of changing my opinions … I am not myself in any degree ashamed of having changed my opinions. What physicist who was already active in 1900 would dream of boasting that his opinions had not changed during the last half century? In science men change their opinions when new knowledge becomes available; but philosophy in the minds of many is assimilated rather to theology than to science. … The kind of philosophy that I value and have endeavoured to pursue is scientific, in the sense that there is some definite knowledge to be obtained and that new discoveries can make the admission of former error inevitable to any candid mind. For what I have said, whether early or late, I do not claim the kind of truth which theologians claim for their creeds. I claim only, at best, that the opinion expressed was a sensible one to hold at the time when it was expressed. I should be much surprised if subsequent research did not show that it needed to be modified. I hope, therefore, that whoever uses this dictionary will not suppose the remarks which it quotes to be intended as pontifical pronouncements, but only as the best I could do at the time towards the promotion of clear and accurate thinking. Clarity, above all, has been my aim.”

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

Preface to The Bertrand Russell Dictionary of Mind, Matter and Morals (1952) edited by Lester E. Denonn
1950s

Men, Truth, Dreams, Hope

“A few truths, for those who have ears and eyes and care to know the truth:
1.) The hurricane that hit New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama was an astonishing tragedy. The suffering and loss of life and peace of mind of the residents of those areas is acutely horrifying.
2.) George Bush did not cause the hurricane. Hurricanes have been happening for eons. George Bush did not create them or unleash this one.
3.) George Bush did not make this one worse than others. There have been far worse hurricanes than this before George Bush was born.”

Ben Stein (1944) actor, writer, commentator, lawyer, teacher, humorist

Get Off His Back, The American Spectator, 2 September 2005, 2011-09-03 http://spectator.org/archives/2005/09/02/get-off-his-back-updated, referring to Hurricane Katrina

Life, Truth, Peace, Suffering

“The inner labor, the inner values, and the inner difficulties and frictions are too often unknown to those who decide for a vocation, and they are unable to correlate those essential factors of the life-calling with all that nature by inheritance, and society by surroundings and training, have planted and developed in their minds.”

Hugo Munsterberg (1863–1916) German-American psychologist, philosopher and agitator

Source: Psychology and Industrial Efficiency (1913), p. 33

Life, Nature, Training

“Buddhism is a practice, not a belief, and every Buddhist is, in some way, lay clergy — involved in the way a scientist is involved in his or her work, or in the way a writer's mind is involved in writing, present in the background, all the time.”

Francisco Varela (1946–2001) Chilean biologist

The Emergent Self (1995)

Way, Time

“It must be borne in mind that everything the propagandist does or says is for effect—most commonly the effect on fools. The public wants not truth but a show?”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: Are We Victims of Propaganda, Our Invisible Masters: A Debate with Edward Bernays (1929), p. 144

Truth, Fools

“You should keep in mind no names, nor numbers, nor isolated incidents, not even results, but only methods.. The method produces numerous results; a few of these will remain in our memory, and as long as they remain few, they are useful to illustrate and to keep alive the rules which order a thousand results.”

Emanuel Lasker (1868–1941) German World Chess Champion and grandmaster, contract bridge player, mathematician, and philosopher

Source: Lasker's Manual of Chess (1925), p. 338

Memory

“There are three forces on the side of life which require no exceptional mental endowment, which are not very rare at present, and might be very common under better social institutions. They are love, the instinct of constructiveness, and the joy of life. All three are checked and enfeebled at present by the conditions under which men live—not only the less outwardly fortunate, but also the majority of the well-to-do. Our institutions rest upon injustice and authority: it is only by closing our hearts against sympathy and our minds against truth that we can endure the oppressions and unfairnesses by which we profit. The conventional conception of what constitutes success leads most men to live a life in which their most vital impulses are sacrificed, and the joy of life is lost in listless weariness. Our economic system compels almost all men to carry out the purposes of others rather than their own, making them feel impotent in action and only able to secure a certain modicum of passive pleasure. All these things destroy the vigor of the community, the expansive affections of individuals, and the power of viewing the world generously. All these things are unnecessary and can be ended by wisdom and courage. If they were ended, the impulsive life of men would become wholly different, and the human race might travel towards a new happiness and a new vigor.”

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

Source: 1910s, Why Men Fight https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Why_Men_Fight (1917), pp. 18-19

Love, Life, Wisdom, Men

“But Zeus does not bring to accomplishment all thoughts in men's minds.”

Homér Iliad

XVIII. 328 (tr. R. Lattimore).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

Men

“Antisthenes … said once to a youth from Pontus who was on the point of coming to him to be his pupil, and was asking him what things he wanted, "You want a new book, and a new pen, and a new tablet;" - meaning a new mind.”

Antisthenes (-444–-365 BC) Greek philosopher

§ 4
From Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius

Books, Youth

“You are not in control of your mind—because you, as a conscious agent, are only part of your mind, living at the mercy of other parts.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Source: 2010s, Free Will (2012), pp. 37-8

Parting

“The only subversive mind is the one that questions the obligation to exist; all the others, the anarchist at the top of the list, compromise with the established order.”

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

The New Gods (1969)

Question

“Of all the thoughts that rise in the mind, the thought 'I' is the first thought.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Nan Yar = Who am I?

“Never mind… Don't cry… I will catch him again… [Stepping to the front of the stage and addressing the audience. ] If any of you should find him, would you be so very kind as to give him back to us?… We need him for our happiness, later on…”

Maurice Maeterlinck The Blue Bird

Tyltyl
The Blue Bird (1908)

Happiness, Cry

“To build up a community, not upon Liberal opinions, which any man may fashion to his fancy, but upon popular principles, which assert equal rights, civil and religious; to uphold the institutions of the country because they are the embodiment of the wants and wishes of the nation, and protect us alike from individual tyranny and popular outrage; equally to resist democracy and oligarchy; and favour that principle of free aristocracy which is the only basis and security for constitutional government; to be vigilant to guard and prompt to vindicate the honour of the country, but to hold aloof from that turbulent diplomacy which only distracts the mind of a people from internal improvement; to lighten taxation; frugally but wisely to administer the public treasure; to favour popular education, because it is the best guarantee for public order; to defend local government; and to be as jealous of the rights of the working man as of the prerogatives of the Crown and the privileges of the Senate—these were once the principles which regulated Tory statesmen, and I for one have no wish that the Tory party should ever be in power unless they practise them.”

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

Source: Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1862/aug/01/the-administration-of-viscount in the House of Commons (1 August 1862).

People, Education, Democracy, Communication

“Faith is a state of mind that can be conditioned through self-discipline. Faith will accomplish.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Part 6 "Beyond System — The Ultimate Source of Jeet Kune Do"
Jeet Kune Do (1997)

Faith

“I had to prepare the mind of the country, and to educate…our party. … I had to prepare the mind of Parliament and the country on this question of Reform.”

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

Source: Speech on Reform Bill of 1867, Edinburgh, Scotland (29 October 1867), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 289.

Education, Question, Country

“Desire is the memory of pleasure and fear is the memory of pain. Both make the mind restless. (…)”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Desire and fear
Source: "I am That." P.8

Pain, Pleasure, Fear, Memory

“If the task of philosophy is to break the domination of words over the human mind […], then my concept notation, being developed for these purposes, can be a useful instrument for philosophers […] I believe the cause of logic has been advanced already by the invention of this concept notation.”

Gottlob Frege book Begriffsschrift

Begriffsschrift (1879) Preface to the Begriffsschrift

“We must now take precautions to prevent you from being embarrassed by something in which the ignorant majority is at fault for lack of proper consideration, and so from supposing with them, that man has not been created truly good simply because he is able to do evil. … If you reconsider this matter carefully and force your mind to apply a more acute understanding to it, it will be revealed to you that man's status is better and higher for the very reason for which it is thought to be inferior: it is on this choice between two ways, on this freedom to choose either alternative, that the glory of the rational mind is based, it is in this that the whole honor of our nature consists, it is from this that its dignity is derived.”

Pelagius (360–420) British monk

Letter to Demetrias

Way, Understanding, Nature, Freedom

“Those truly natural wants, which reason alone, without some other help, is not able to fence against, nor keep from disturbing us. The pains of sickness and hurts, hunger, thirst, and cold, want of sleep and rest or relaxation of the part weary'd with labour, are what all men feel and the best dispos'd minds cannot but be sensible of their uneasiness; and therefore ought, by fit applications, to seek their removal, though not with impatience, or over great haste, upon the first approaches of them, where delay does not threaten some irreparable harm. The pains that come from the necessities of nature, are monitors to us to beware of greater mischiefs, which they are the forerunner of; and therefore they must not be wholly neglected, and strain'd too far. But yet the more children can be inur'd to hardships of this kind, by a wise care to make them stronger in body and mind, the better it will be for them.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 107
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

Men, Hunger, Pain, Children

“We also know that our support for civil society is not just about what we’re against, but also what we’re for. Because we’ve noticed that governments that are more responsive and effective are typically governments where the people are free to assemble, and speak their minds, and petition their leaders, and hold us accountable.”

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

2015, Remarks at Panama Civil Society Forum (April 2015)

People, Support

“And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many. So I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq…. Once we had rounded him up and gotten rid of his government, then the question is what do you put in its place? You know, you then have accepted the responsibility for governing Iraq.”

Dick Cheney (1941) American politician and businessman

August 1992, at the Discovery Institute in Seattle http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/192908_cheney29.html http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/192828_joel29.html 1990s

Question, Problem, Thinking, Decision

“Upon his return from Congress he went to the practice of the law with greater earnestness than ever before. …In 1854 his profession had almost superseded the thought of politics in his mind, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused him as he had never been before.
In the autumn of that year he took the stump with no broader practical aim or object than to secure, if possible, the reëlection of Hon. Richard Yates to Congress. His speeches at once attracted a more marked attention than they had ever before done. …
In the canvass of 1856 Mr. Lincoln made over fifty speeches, no one of which, so far as he remembers, was put in print. One of them was made at Galena, but Mr. Lincoln has no recollection of any part of it being printed… he thinks he could not have expressed himself as represented.”

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

1860s, A Short Autobiography (1860)

Law, Autumn, Thinking, Parting

“The impetuous conquests of Alexander, the more politic and premeditated extension of territory made by the Romans, the wild and cruel incursions of the Mexicans, and the despotic acquisitions of the incas, have in both hemispheres contributed to put an end to the separate existence of many tribes as independent nations, and tended at the same time to establish more extended international amalgamation. Men of great and strong minds, as well as whole nations, acted under the influence of one idea, the purity of which was, however, utterly unknown to them. It was Christianity which first promulgated the truth of its exalted charity, although the seed sown yielded but a slow and scanty harvest. Before the religion of Christ manifested its form, its existence was only revealed by a faint foreshadowing presentiment. In recent times, the idea of civilization has acquired additional intensity, and has given rise to a desire of extending more widely the relations of national intercourse and of intellectual cultivation; even selfishness begins to learn that by such a course its interests will be better served than by violent and forced isolation. Language more than any other attribute of mankind, binds together the whole human race. By its idiomatic properties it certainly seems to separate nations, but the reciprocal understanding of foreign languages connects men together on the other hand without injuring individual national characteristics.”

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

Kosmos (1847)

Men, Truth, Religion, Idea

“His Majesty [emperor Charles V], [in his court in Augsburg] sent for me. After the usual courtesies and examination of the pictures which I have brought, he asked for news of you.... I replied that at Venice, in Rome and in all Italy the public assumed that his Holiness [the new Pope], was well minded to make you.. [Cardinal] upon which Caesar [= Charles V] showed signs of pleasure in his face, saying he would greatly rejoice at such an event, which could not fail to please you, and so, dear brother [= close friend], I have done for you such service as I owe to a friend of your standing.... not a day passes but the Duke of Alva speaks to me of the 'divine Aretini', because he loves you so much..”

Titian (1488–1576) Italian painter

Quote in Titian's letter to his friend Pietro Aretino in Venice, sent from Augsburg, 11 Nov. 1550, the original is in Lettere a P. Aretino' u.s. i. p. 147; as cited in Titian: his life and times - With some account of his family... Vol. 2. J. A. Crowe & G.B. Cavalcaselle, Publisher London, John Murray, 1877, p. 198
1541-1576

Love, Pleasure

“But what’s also true is that each of us have to cultivate an attitude of tolerance and mutual respect. And for young people, we have to try to encourage each other to be tolerant and respectful. So in the United States, obviously one of the biggest problems historically has been the issue of racial discrimination. And part of our efforts to overcome racial discrimination involve passing laws like the Civil Rights Law and the Voting Rights Law, and that required marches and protests and Dr. King. But part of the effort was also people changing the hearts and minds, and realizing that just because somebody doesn’t look like me doesn’t mean that they’re not worthy of respect. And when you’re growing up and you saw a friend of yours call somebody by a derogatory name, a rude name because they were different, it’s your job to say to that person, actually, that’s not the right way to think. If you are Christian and you have a friend who says I hate Muslims, then it’s up to you to say to that friend, you know what, I don’t believe in that; I think that’s the wrong attitude, I think we have to be respectful of the Muslim population. If you’re Buddhist and you say -- you hear somebody in your group say I want to treat a Hindu differently, it’s your job to speak out. So the most important thing I think is for you to, in whatever circle of influence you have, speak out on behalf of tolerance and diversity and respect. If you are quiet, then the people who are intolerant, they’ll own the stage and they’ll set the terms of the debate. And one of the things that leadership requires is saying things even when it’s uncomfortable, even when it’s unpopular -- especially when it’s unpopular. So I hope that as you get more influence, you’ll continue to speak out on behalf of these values.”

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

2014, Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative Town Hall Speech (November 2014)

Hate, People, Law, Hope

“The position I early was enabled to take was one of self-reliance. And were all women as sure of their wants as I was, the result would be the same. But they are so overloaded with precepts and guardians who think that nothing is so much to be dreaded for a woman as originality of thought or character, that their minds are impeded with doubts till they lose their chance of fair, free proportions. The difficulty is to get them to the point from which they shall naturally develop self-respect, and learn self-help.”

Margaret Fuller book Woman in the Nineteenth Century

Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)

Women, Nature, Thinking, Learning

“Beware of thinkers whose minds function only when they are fueled by a quotation.”

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

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

“317 is a prime, not because we think so, or because our minds are shaped in one way rather than another, but because it is, because mathematical reality is built that way.”

G. H. Hardy book A Mathematician's Apology

A Mathematician's Apology (1941)

Way, Mathematics, Thinking, Reality

“I do differ from you radically in respect to familiar things & scenes; for I always demand close correlation with the landscape & historic stream to which I belong, & would feel completely lost in infinity without a system of reference-points based on known & accustomed objects. I take complete relativity so much for granted, that I cannot conceive of anything as existing in itself in any recognisable form. What gives things an aspect & quasi-significance to us is the fact that we view things consistently from a certain artificial & fortuitous angle. Without the preservation of that angle, coherent consciousness & entity itself becomes inconceivable. Thus my wish for freedom is not so much a wish to put all terrestrial things behind me & plunge forever into abysses beyond light, matter, & energy. That, indeed, would mean annihilation as a personality rather than liberation. My wish is perhaps best defined as a wish for infinite visioning & voyaging power, yet without loss of the familiar background which gives all things significance. I want to know what stretches Outside, & be able to visit all the gulfs & dimensions beyond Space & Time. I want, too, to juggle the calendar at will; bringing things from the immemorial past down into the present, & making long journeys into the forgotten years. But I want the familiar Old Providence of my childhood as a perpetual base for these necromancies & excursions—& in a good part of these necromancies & excursions I want certain transmuted features of Old Providence to form part of the alien voids I visit or conjure up. I am as geographic-minded as a cat—places are everything to me. Long observation has shewn me that no other objective experience can give me even a quarter of the kick I can extract from the sight of a fresh landscape or urban vista whose antiquity & historic linkages are such as to correspond with certain fixed childhood dream-patterns of mine. Of course my twilight cosmos of half-familiar, fleetingly remembered marvels is just as unattainable as your Ultimate Abysses—this being the real secret of its fascination. Nothing really known can continue to be acutely fascinating—the charm of many familiar things being mainly resident in their power to symbolise or suggest unknown extensions & overtones.”

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

Letter to Clark Ashton Smith (7 November 1930), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 214
Non-Fiction, Letters

Secret, Dreams, Feeling, Cats

“To begin with, things [after Independence in 1980] went well because [Robert] Mugabe was no fool. He realised [that] it was important to maintain the economy and keep the country expanding. And in any case he was committed to do that by the Lancaster House Agreement which said that there could be no change in [the existing status] for at least seven years unless [he] could get 100% support [from] all the people. In no ways would he have been able to get the support of the white members of Parliament, and also the Matabeles. So we were satisfied that what we were doing was in keeping with the traditions and culture and what was expected of us, and Mugabe used to thank me for coming to see him, [giving] him the benefit of my advice and [telling] him what the white people were thinking. But he only did this for a while because he inherited the best economy in Africa. It was viable. And after two years he quickly changed his mind because he had a lot of money available. He had his [own] commanders in control because he had removed the white commanders who would have taken action against him if he had defied the Lancaster House Agreement before the seven-year [period]. He removed our commanders and put his commanders in so that he knew that he could defy this. And so he breached the Lancaster House Agreement.”

Ian Smith (1919–2007) Prime Minister of Rhodesia

Ian Smith - A Bit Of A Rebel, Ian Smith

Money, People, Fools, Way

“At present, many of the ablest minds are trying to devise expedients for preventing a repetition of the awful conflict which is only theoretically ended and the duration and main issues of which I have correctly predicted in an article printed in the Sun of December 20, 1914. The proposed League is not a remedy but, on the contrary, in the opinion of a number of competent men, may bring about results just the opposite. It is particularly regrettable that a punitive policy was adopted in framing the terms of peace, because a few years hence, it will be possible for nations to fight without armies, ships or guns, by weapons far more terrible, to the destructive action and range of which there is virtually no limit. Any city, at a distance, whatsoever, from the enemy, can be destroyed by him and no power on earth can stop him from doing so.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

My Inventions (1919)

Men, Peace, Sun, Fight

“Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions. After looking at the Alps, I felt that my mind had been stretched beyond the limits of its elasticity, and fitted so loosely on my old ideas of space that I had to spread these to fit it.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

Idea

“By means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms— elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest—will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial—but democracy and freedom in a strictly Pickwickian sense. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World Revisited

Source: Brave New World Revisited (1958), Chapter 3, p. 25

Democracy, Nature, Sense, Freedom

“When I call to mind my earliest impressions, I wonder whether the process ordinarily referred to as growing up is not actually a process of growing down; whether experience, so much touted among adults as the thing children lack, is not actually a progressive dilution of the essentials by the trivialities of living.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“Illinois and Iowa: Red Legs Kicking”, p. 120.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Illinois and Iowa: Red Legs Kicking," "Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain,"

Children

“The primitive mentality is a condition of the human mind, and not a stage in its historical development.”

Lucien Lévy-Bruhl (1857–1939) French philosopher

Quoted in François-Bernard Mâche (1983, 1992). Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion (Musique, mythe, nature, ou les Dauphins d'Arion, trans. Susan Delaney). Harwood Academic Publishers. ISBN 3718653214.

“18. The deeply learned ones know the mind as the directly expressed meaning of the supreme knowledge. The heart is the meaning aimed at. The Supreme is none other than the heart.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

The Science of the Heart

Knowledge, Learning, Heart

“TS (Tourette's Syndrome) has really taught me a lesson about judging people who are different. Now when I see somebody do or say something I don't understand, I try to look beyound appearances and ask myself what makes that person tick — no pun intended. Think about it: When you keep an open mind about things that seem unusual or strange, all sorts of new understanding come to you. The world gets bigger, and so do you.”

Neve Campbell (1973) Canadian actress

Celebrity Diary, Teen People Magazine, April 2000

People, World, Understanding, Thinking

“It is not enough to be in the right place at the right time. You should also have an open mind at the right time.”

Paul Erdős (1913–1996) Hungarian mathematician and freelancer

My Brain Is Open : The Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdos (1998) by Bruce Schechter, p. 99

Time

“Be patient with the belligerence of the simple-minded. It is not easy to understand that one doesn’t understand”

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

Geduld mit der Streitsucht der Einfältigen! Es ist nicht leicht zu begreifen, dass man nicht begreift.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 20.

Understanding

“Whether they knew or not,
Goldsmith and Burke, Swift and the Bishop of Cloyne
All hated Whiggery; but what is Whiggery?
A levelling, rancorous, rational sort of mind
That never looked out of the eye of a saint
Or out of drunkard’s eye.”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

The Seven Sages http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1685/ The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)

Hate

“By 1978 my research was essentially complete and the real problem was sharp in my mind. The Western nations were ruled by a Zionist conspiracy… [that] above all things wants to exterminate the White Aryan race”

David Lane (white nationalist) (1938–2007) American white supremacist, convicted felon

David Lane

Problem

“When by these steps he has got resolution enough not to be deterr'd from what he ought to do, by the apprehension of danger; when fear does not, in sudden or hazardous occurrences, decompose his mind, set his body a-trembling, and make him unfit for action, or run away from it, he has then the courage of a rational creature: and such an hardiness we should endeavour by custom and use to bring children to, as proper occasions come in our way.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 115
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

Children, Fear, Way, Courage

“[Stalin's] purge caused me to examine the meaning of Communism…. I had always known of course that there were books critical of Communism…. I had never read them because I knew that the party did not want me to read them….. the first book I read… was called I Speak for the Silent [by] Professor Vladimir Tchernavin…. He was a little man in the Communist world, gentle, humane, good…. Suddenly for no reason at all he was arrested and carried away by the secret police…. Now for the first time, I believed that slave labor camps existed…. I said ‘this is evil, absolute evil. Of this evil I am a part.’ … If Communism were evil, what was left but moral chaos? …. The rags that fell from me were not only Communism. What fell was the whole web of the materialist modern mind – the luminous shroud which it has spun about the spirit of man, paralyzing in the name of rationalism the instinct of his soul for God, denying in the name of knowledge the reality of the soul….”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

Source: Witness (1952), pp. 79-83

God, Secret, Books, World

“Truth, like a woman, must be wooed and won - and this only through the purity of mind and the heart’s deep love.”

David Zindell (1952) American writer

Source: The Wild (1995), p. 388

Love, Truth, Heart

“Human mind is capable of making up excuses to justify actions no matter how bad they were”

Ali Al-Wardi (1913–1995) Iraqi sociologist

“The true nature of the gods is that of magical images shaped out of the astral plane by mankind's thought, and influenced by the mind.”

Dion Fortune (1890–1946) British occultist and author

Dion Fortune, The Mystical Qabalah

God, Nature

“And what would our ideas of God, of religion, be like if they had come to us through the minds of women? Ever think of that?”

Tom Robbins Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates (2000)

Women, God, Religion, Idea

“Mr. President, I am not undertaking to answer the charge that I am ignorant. It is true. I am an ignorant man. I have had no college education. I have not even had a high school education. But the things that takes me far in politics is that I do not have to color what comes into my mind and into my heart. I say it unvarnished. I say it without veneer. I have not the learning to do otherwise, and therefore my ignorance is often not detected.

I know the hearts of the People because I have not colored my own. I know when I am right in my own conscience. I do not talk one way in the cloakroom and another way out here. I do not talk one way back there in the hills of Louisiana and another way here in the Senate.

I have one language. Ignorant as it is, it is the universal language within the sphere in which I operate. Its simplicity gains pardon for my lack of letters and education.

Nonetheless my voice will be the same as it has been. Patronage will not change it. Fear will not change it. Persecution will not change it. It cannot be changed while people suffer. The only way it can be changed is to make the lives of these people decent and respectable. No one will ever hear political opposition out of me when that is done.”

Huey Long (1893–1935) American politician, Governor of Louisiana, and United States Senator

Huey Long, U.S. Senate floor speech, March 5, 1935

People, Education, Fear, School

“Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.
Have we no tendency to the latter condition?
Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination — piece of machinery so to speak — compounded of the Nebraska doctrine, and the Dred Scott decision.”

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

1850s, The House Divided speech (1858)

Law, Decision

“The mind will subside only by means of the enquiry 'Who am I?'. The thought 'Who am I?', destroying all other thoughts, will itself finally be destroyed like the stick used for stirring the funeral pyre.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Nan Yar = Who am I?

“In infancy I was afraid of the dark, which I peopled with all sorts of things; but my grandfather cured me of that by daring me to walk through certain dark parts of the house when I was 3 or 4 years old. After that, dark places held a certain fascination for me. But it is in dreams that I have known the real clutch of stark, hideous, maddening, paralysing fear. My infant nightmares were classics, & in them there is not an abyss of agonising cosmic horror that I have not explored. I don't have such dreams now—but the memory of them will never leave me. It is undoubtedly from them that the darkest & most gruesome side of my fictional imagination is derived. At the ages of 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, & 8 I have been whirled through formless abysses of infinite night and adumbrated horrors as black & as seethingly sinister as any of our friend Fafhrd's [a nickname Lovecraft used for Fritz Leiber] "splatter-stencil" triumphs. That's why I appreciate such triumphs so keenly, I have seen these things! Many a time I have awaked in shrieks of panic, & have fought desperately to keep from sinking back into sleep & its unutterable horrors. At the age of six my dreams became peopled with a race of lean, faceless, rubbery, winged things to which I applied the home-made name of night-gaunts. Night after night they would appear in exactly the same form—& the terror they brought was beyond any verbal description. Long decades later I embodied them in one of my Fungi from Yuggoth pseudo-sonnets, which you may have read. Well—after I was 8 all these things abated, perhaps because of the scientific habit of mind which I was acquiring (or trying to acquire). I ceased to believe in religion or any other form of the supernatural, & the new logic gradually reached my subconscious imagination. Still, occasional nightmares brought recurrent touches of the ancient fear—& as late as 1919 I had some that I could use in fiction without much change. The Statement of Randolph Carter is a literal dream transcript. Now, in the sere & yellow leaf (I shall be 47 in August), I seem to be rather deserted by stark horror. I have nightmares only 2 or 3 times a year, & of these none even approaches those of my youth in soul-shattering, phobic monstrousness. It is fully a decade & more since I have known fear in its most stupefying & hideous form. And yet, so strong is the impress of the past, I shall never cease to be fascinated by fear as a subject for aesthetic treatment. Along with the element of cosmic mystery & outsideness, it will always interest me more than anything else. It is, in a way, amusing that one of my chief interests should be an emotion whose poignant extremes I have never known in waking life!”

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

Letter to Harry O. Fischer (late February 1937), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 416-417
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life, People, Youth, Age

“Now, without directly altering the existing condition of things, it is possible to work upon the human mind and character, and give them a direction no more correspondent with that condition; and this it is precisely which he who is wise will endeavour to do. Only in this way is it possible to reproduce the new system in reality, just as it has been conceived in idea; and in every other method (setting aside the evils which arise from disturbing the natural order of human development) it is changed, modified, disfigured by the remaining influence of preceding systems, in the actual state of circumstances as well as in the minds of men. But if this obstacle be removed,—if the new condition of things which is resolved upon can succeed in working out its full influence, unimpeded by what was previously existing and by the circumstances of the present on which this has acted,—then must nothing further be allowed to stand in the way of the contemplated reform.”

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

Men, Way, Idea, Nature

“The division of labor, which has brought such perfection in mechanical industries, is altogether fatal when applied to productions of the mind. All work of the mind is superior in proportion as the mind that produces it is universal.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

Universe, Perfection

“For ten long years the living of the dead knows nought.
Though to my mind not brought,
Could the dead be forgot?”

Su Shi (1037–1101) Chinese writer

"Dreaming of My Deceased Wife on the Night of the Twentieth Day of the First Month" (《江城子·乙卯正月二十日夜记梦》), in Song of the Immortals: An Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry, trans. Yuanchong Xu (Beijing: New World Press, 1994), p. 202

Dead

““Culture” means … the cultivation of the mind, the taking care and improving of the native faculties of the mind in accordance with the nature of the mind. Just as the soil needs cultivators of the soil, the mind needs teachers. But teachers are not as easy to come by as farmers. The teachers themselves are pupils and must be pupils. But there cannot be an infinite regress: ultimately there must be teachers who are not in turn pupils. Those teachers who are not in turn pupils are the great minds.”

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism

“What is liberal education,” p. 3
Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968)

Nature, Teachers

“Just as maniacs, who never enjoy tranquility, so also he who is resentful and retains an enemy will never have the enjoyment of any peace; incessantly raging and daily increasing the tempest of his thoughts calling to mind his words and acts, and detesting the very name of him who has aggrieved him. Do you but mention his enemy, he becomes furious at once, and sustains much inward anguish; and should he chance to get only a bare sight of him, he fears and trembles, as if encountering the worst evils, Indeed, if he perceives any of his relations, if but his garment, or his dwelling, or street, he is tormented by the sight of them. For as in the case of those who are beloved, their faces, their garments, their sandals, their houses, or streets, excite us, the instant we behold them; so also should we observe a servant, or friend, or house, or street, or any thing else belonging to those We hate and hold our enemies, we are stung by all these things; and the strokes we endure from the sight of each one of them are frequent and continual. What is the need then of sustaining such a siege, such torment and such punishment? For if hell did not threaten the resentful, yet for the very torment resulting from the thing itself we ought to forgive the offences of those who have aggrieved us. But when deathless punishments remain behind, what can be more senseless than the man, who both here and there brings punishment upon himself, while he thinks to be revenged upon his enemy!”

John Chrysostom (349–407) important Early Church Father

Homilies on the Statues http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf109/Page_474.html, Homily XX

Hate, Fear, Peace, Forgiveness

“Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.”

Sara Teasdale There Will Come Soft Rains

"There Will Come Soft Rains"
Flame and Shadow (1920)

Spring, Bird, Tree

“The sayings … which are of importance for the whole end of salvation, and are enveloped in a wonderful and super-celestial depth of thought, should not be taken as they strike the careless ear, but with an effort of mind to reach the very spirit of the Saviour.”

Clement of Alexandria (150–215) Christian theologian

Source: The Rich Man's Salvation, p. 283.

Effort

“Primitive superstition lies just below the surface of even the most tough-minded individuals, and it is precisely those who most fight against it who are the first to succumb to its suggestive effects.”

C.G. Jung book Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle

Source: Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle (1960), p. 25

Fight

“Ethics could teach us only those purposes and ideals. If the teachers seeks insight into the means by which the aim can be reached, into the facts by which the child can be molded, his way must lead from ethics to psychology. (…) Water flows downhill, anyhow, but to bring the water uphill hydraulic forces are indeed necessary. To overcome nature and instead to prepare for a life of ideals, to inhibit personal desires and instead to learn to serve the higher purposes indeed demands most serious and most systematic efforts. It is the teachers' task to make these efforts with all his best knowledge of mind and body, of social and of cultural values.”

Hugo Munsterberg (1863–1916) German-American psychologist, philosopher and agitator

Hugo Munsterberg, Psychology and the Teacher, 1909 (new edition, 2006), pp. 64-65.

Life, Way, Nature, Knowledge

“17. The Jnanin present in the heart sees the mind merged in the light of the heart, like moonlight in the presence of the sun during the day.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

The Science of the Heart

Light, Sun, Heart

“We do not choose the day of our birth nor may we choose the day of our death, yet choice is the sovereign faculty of the mind.”

Thornton Wilder book The Eighth Day

The Eighth Day (1967)

Death, Birth

“An evolutionary approach provides powerful lenses that correct for instinct blindness. It allows one to recognize what natural competences exist, it indicates that the mind is a heterogeneous collection of these competences and, most importantly, it provides positive theories of their designs. Einstein once commented that "It is the theory which decides what we can observe". An evolutionary focus is valuable for psychologists, who are studying a biological system of fantastic complexity, because it can make the intricate outlines of the mind's design stand out in sharp relief. Theories of adaptive problems can guide the search for the cognitive programs that solve them; knowing what cognitive programs exist can, in turn, guide the search for their neural basis.”

Leda Cosmides (1957) American psychologist

Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, " Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer http://www.cep.ucsb.edu/primer.html" (1997)

Search, Nature, Problem, Study

“I love reading books. In fact I have so many books at home that my mom has asked me not to purchase anymore. I feel books give a lot of knowledge and allow us to think from different perspectives. My all time favourite books are What I Know For Sure by Oprah Winfrey and The Power of your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy. I like to read from fiction to philosophical all of them. The last book I finished reading was Adultery by Paulo Coelho.”

Sukirti Kandpal (1987) Indian actress

Sukirti Kandpal on #WorldBookDay http://www.tellychakkar.com/tv/features/worldbookday-tv-celebs-and-their-love-reading-150423/

Love, Books, Feeling, Home

“… what is there in the subject of psychology to demand the attention of the manager?
Psychology, in the popular phrase, is " the study of the mind." It has for years been included in the training of all teachers, and has been one of the first steps for the student of philosophy; but it has not, usually, been included among the studies of the young scientific or engineering student, or of any students in other lines than Philosophy and Education. This, not because its value as a " culture subject " was not understood, but because the course of the average student is so crowded with technical preparation necessary to his life work, and because the practical value of psychology has not been recognized. It is well recognized that the teacher must understand the working of the mind in order best to impart his information in that way that will enable the student to grasp it most readily. It was not recognized that every man going out into the world needs all the knowledge that he can get as to the working of the human mind in order not only to give but to receive information with the least waste and expenditure of energy, nor was it recognized that in the industrial, as well as the academic world, almost every man is a teacher.”

Lillian Gilbreth (1878–1972) American psychologist and industrial engineer

Source: Psychology of management, 1914, p. 1-2

Life, World, Education, Way

“Each state of the human mind has some parable in the physical creation by which it is shadowed forth; nor is it only artists and poets, but even the most abstract thinkers that have drawn from this source. Lively activity we name fire; time is a stream that rolls on, sweeping all before it; eternity is a circle; a mystery is hid in midnight gloom, and truth dwells in the sun. Nay, I begin to believe that even the future destiny of the human race is prefigured in the dark oracular utterances of bodily creation.”

Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright

Letter 4: Theosophy of Julius
The Philosophical Letters

Truth, Time, Sun, Future

“I took that horrible novel back to the library — yes! That hideous book by that insane Mr. Lawrence. I cannot control the output of diseased minds or people who cater to them — BUT I WON'T ALLOW SUCH FILTH BROUGHT INTO MY HOUSE! No, no, no, no, no!”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Amanda, Scene Three
The Glass Menagerie (1944)

People, Books, Disease, Housing

“What is man? … What a strange union of matter and mind! A machine for converting material into spiritual force.”

Benjamin Peirce (1809–1880) American mathematician

As quoted in The Early Years of the Saturday Club, 1855-1870 (1918) by Edward Waldo Emerson.

“A lot has changed, El Paso, a lot has changed. One thing's for sure, I'm still the fluffy guy. And I say "fluffy" because that is the politically correct term, for those of you who don't remember I used to say that there were Five Levels of Fatness. Reason why I say "Used to say" is because now there are six! Uh-huh, I met the new one in Las Cruces. The original five levels are Big, Healthy, Husky, Fluffy, and DAMN! People ask, "What could be bigger than DAMN!" The new level's called "OH HELL NO!" What's the difference? You're still willing to work with level five. Example, if you're on an elevator and you're with your friend and this really big guy gets on and you and your friend look at each other and you're like, "DAAAMN!" But you still let the big guy ride your elevator. That's the difference. Level six, you see walking towards your elevator, [Deep growling noise] [Pretends to be a shocked passenger and starts pushing the "close door" button. ] "OH HELL NO!" [Growl] "NO!!" [Growl] "NO!!" [Pretends to kick the fat man out] That's the difference. The guy that I met was six foot eight, six hundred and fourteen pounds. Uh-huh, OH HELL NO!! And he was offended at my show. Not by anything that I said, but because of the fact that now at the shows I started selling T-shirts and apparently, I didn't have his size. Keep in mind, I go all the way up to 5X on the T-shirts and he was like, [Deep growling voice] "You don't have my size." I was like, "Dude, I didn't know they MADE you! I have up to 5X, I don't have [Growl] X!"”

Gabriel Iglesias (1976) American actor

A picture of a dinosaur on the back of the tag, you know?
I'm Not Fat, I'm Fluffy (2009)

People, Way, Guy, Hell

“The sun was in mind to come out but having a look at the weather it was in lost heart and went back again.”

Brendan Behan (1923–1964) Irish poet, short story writer, novelist, and playwright

Confessions of an Irish Rebel (1967 [1965])

Sun, Heart, Weather

“Emotions are triggered by what we like to call emotionally competent stimuli, that is, objects or situations that can be real, like in front of you, or be in your mind when you think and you recall, and they act on brain devices that were designed by evolution.”

António Damásio (1944) neuroscientist and professor at the University of Southern California

Antonio Damasio, Brain and mind from medicine to society 1/2, Open University of Catalonia, 2005 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbacW1HVZVk

Thinking

“(…) Pain and suffering are only the body and the mind screaming for attention. To go beyond the body you must be healthy; to go beyond the mind, you must have your mind in perfect order. (…).”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Suffering
Source: I am That, P.130.

Pain, Suffering, Perfection

“The perfect way is only difficult for those who pick and choose. Do not like, do not dislike; all will then be clear. Make a hairbreadth difference and heaven and earth are set apart; if you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between "for" and "against" is the mind's worst disease.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

In "The Tao of Jeet Kune Do" by Bruce Lee (1975, compiled and published posthumously) and also in Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living (2000) edited by John Little, this is attributed to Lee, perhaps because it was found in his notes, but it is also quoted in precisely this form, from what appear to be translations of Taoist writings in The Religions of Man (1958) by Huston Smith. It is actually from Xinxin Ming, by the Third Chinese Chan [Zen] Patriarch Sengcan.
Misattributed

Truth, Disease, Way, Perfection

“Russia cannot be understood with the mind alone,
No ordinary yardstick can span her greatness:
She stands alone, unique –
In Russia, one can only believe.”

Fyodor Tyutchev (1803–1873) Russian poet

Russia cannot be understood with the mind alone...

“You have no mind to be unkind,"
Said echo in her ear:
"No mind to bring a living thing
To suffering or fear.
For all that's bad, or mean or sad, you have no mind,
my dear.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

"To Janet Merriman", quoted in Letters of Lewis Carroll to his Child-Friends (1933) p. 81

Sadness, Fear, Suffering

“Evaluated by Sanãtana Dharma, Christianity and Islam turn out to be constructs of the outer human mind, drawing upon dark drives of the unregenerate unconscious. Sanãtana Dharma stands for self-exploration, self-purification, and self-transcendence, while Islam and Christianity stand for self-stupefaction, self-righteousness, and self-aggrandizement.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Defence of Hindu Society (1983)

Drawing

“One of the things you want to do with a conception like compassion is that you want to start thinking about it like a psychologist, or like a scientist, because compassion is actually definable. The easiest way to approach it is to think about it in Big-5 terms, because it maps onto Agreeableness, which you can break down into Compassion and Politeness. The liberal types, especially the Social Justice types, are way higher in Compassion. It's actually their fundamental characteristic. You might think, 'well, compassion is a virtue.' Yes, it's a virtue, but any uni-dimensional virtue immediately becomes a vice, because real virtue is the intermingling of a number of virtues and their integration into a functional identity that can be expressed socially. Compassion can be great if you happen to be the entity towards which it is directed. But compassion tends to divide the world into crying children and predatory snakes. So if you're a crying child, hey great. But if you happen to be identified as one of the predatory snakes, you better look the hell out. Compassion is what the mother grizzly bear feels for her cubs while she eats you because you got in the way. We don't want to be thinking for a second that compassion isn't a virtue that can lead to violence, because it certainly can. The other problem with compassion - this is why we have conscientiousness - there's five canonical personality dimensions. Agreeableness is good if you are functioning in a kin system. You want to distribute resources equally for example among your children, because you want all of them to have the same chance, and even roughly the same outcome. That is, a good one. But the problem is that you can't extend that moral network to larger groups. As far as I can tell, you need conscientiousness, which is a much colder virtue. It's also a virtue that is much more concerned with larger structures over the longer period of time. And you can think about conscientiousness as a form of compassion too. It's like: 'straighten the hell out, and work hard and your life will go well. I don't care how you feel about that right now.' Someone who's cold, that is, low in agreeableness and high in conscientiousness, will tell you every time. 'Don't come whining to me. I don't care about your hurt feelings. Do your goddamn job or you're going to be out on the street.' One might think, 'Oh that person is being really hard on me.' Not necessarily. They might have your long term best interest in mind. You're fortunate if you come across someone who is disagreeable. Not tyrannically disagreeable, but moderately disagreeable and high in conscientiousness because they will whip you into shape. And that's really helpful. You'll admire people like that. You won't be able to help it. You'll feel like, 'Oh wow, this person has actually given me good information, even though you will feel like a slug after they have taken you apart.' That's the compassion issue. You can't just transform that into a political stance. I think part of what we're seeing is actually the rise of a form of female totalitarianism, because we have no idea what totalitarianism would be like if women ran it, because that's never happened before in the history of the planet. And so, we've introduced women into the political sphere radically over the past fifty years. We have no idea what the consequence of that is going to be. But we do know from our research, which is preliminary, that agreeableness really predicts political correctness, but female gender predicts over and above the personality trait, and that's something we found very rarely in our research. Usually the sex differences are wiped out by the personality differences, but not in this particular case. On top of that, women are getting married later, and they're having children much later, and they're having fewer of them, and so you also have to wonder what their feminine orientation is doing with itself in the interim, roughly speaking. A lot of it is being expressed as political opinion. Fair enough. That's fine. But it's not fine when it starts to shut down discussion.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

Life, Women, Children, People

“To avoid starting out on the wrong foot we must keep in mind, then, that (a) the democratic ideal does not define the democratic reality and, vice versa, a real democracy is not, and cannot be, the same as an ideal one; and that (b) democracy results from, and is shaped by, the interactions between its ideals and its reality, the pull of an ought and the resistance of an is.”

Giovanni Sartori (1924–2017) Italian journalist and political scientist

The Theory of Democracy Revisited (1987), 1. Can Democracy Be Just Anyting?

Democracy, Reality

“First offer to God whatever you eat. One must not eat unoffered food. As your food is, so will be your blood. From pure food you get pure blood, pure mind, and strength. Pure mind begets ecstatic love”

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

prema-bhakti
Women Saints of East and West

Love, God, Food

“God desires to indwell in my whole and total heart and cannot in any way tolerate my having an image in my mind's eye.”

Andreas Karlstadt (1486–1541) German theologian

Source: On the Removal of Images (1522), p. 117

God, Way, Heart

“[A member of the community] should conduct himself always by word, mind and body in such a fashion that it results in help to the society. He should also make his own men understand this.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Sri Ramana Gita

Men, Communication, Fashion, Understanding

“My mind’s buzzing with scripts. I want to do something really different. A long-term goal is to open an orphanage for kids. I’ve envisioned something of huge proportions. But first let me make the money for it.”

Yuvan Shankar Raja (1979) Indian musician

Yuvan Unplugged (2009)

Money

“Of the truths within our reach… the mind and the heart are as doors by which they are received into the soul, but… few enter by the mind, whilst they are brought in crowds by the rash caprices of the will, without the council of reason.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

The Art of Persuasion

Truth, Soul, Heart

“Know Thyself. All else will be known to thee of its own accord. Discriminate between the undying, unchanging, all-pervading, infinite Atma and the ever-changing, phenomenal and perishable universe and body. Enquire, "Who am I?" Make the mind calm. Free yourself from all thoughts other than the simple thought of the Self or Atma. Dive deep into the chambers of your heart. Find out the real, infinite "I". Rest there peacefully for ever and become identical with the Supreme Self.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Abide as the Self

Universe, Change, Heart

“Those who know their minds do not know their hearts.”

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

Tous ceux qui connaissent leur esprit ne connaissent pas leur coeur.
Maxim 103.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Heart

“No one doubts—certainly not I—that the mind exercises a powerful influence over the body. From the beginning of time, the sorcerer, the interpreter of dreams, the fortune-teller, the charlatan, the quack, the wild medicine-man, the educated physician, the mesmerist, and the hypnotist have made use of the client's imagination to help them in their work. They have all recognized the potency and availability of that force. Physicians cure many patients with a bread pill; they know that where the disease is only a fancy, the patient's confidence in the doctor will make the bread pill effective.”

Mark Twain Christian Science

Book I, Ch. 4 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3187/3187-h/3187-h.htm#link2HCH0004 Christian Science (1907)

Education, Disease, Dreams, Exercises

“The first step to get this noble and manly steadiness, is… carefully keep children from frights of all kinds, when they are young. …Instances of such who in a weak timorous mind, have borne, all their whole lives through, the effects of a fright when they were young, are every where to be seen, and therefore as much as may be to be prevented.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 115
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

Children

“I am not interested in a long life. I am not afraid of these things. I don't mind if my life goes in the service of this nation. If I die today, every drop of my blood will invigorate the nation.”

Indíra Gándhí (1917–1984) Indian politician and Prime Minister

Source: Speech, Bhubaneswar, India (October 30, 1984), quoted in "Death in the Garden," by William E. Smith, Time (November 12, 1984) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,926929-3,00.html.

Life

“I saw a sign on the side of the road in Tennessee once that said 'dirt for sale'…what a great country we live in. DIRT for sale. How would you like to get inside that guys mind and look around for a hour? That guy sees opportunity at every glance, doesn't he? It's a big world for this gentleman. 'Oh my god, honey! Honey quit servin' waffles and come here baby. I'm gunna sell dirt! Look it's everywhere. You need it for our planet, honey!”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

The place was called Land Land.
Sane Man (1989)

God, World, Guy, Baby

“My friends and relations … urged … that the quantity [of food] I took was too little for one so advanced in years; against this, I urged that nature was content with little, and that with this small quantity, I had preserved myself for many years in health and activity, that I believed as a man advanced in years, his stomach grew weaker, and therefore the tendency should be to lessen the amount of food rather than to increase. I further reminded them of the two proverbs, which say; he who has a mind to eat a great deal, must eat but little; eating little makes life long, and, living long, he must eat much; and the other proverb was: that, what we leave after making a hearty meal, does us more good than what we have eaten.”

Luigi Cornaro (1484–1566) Italian philosopher

Discourses on the Sober Life

Life, Health, Food, Nature

“Nobody really thinks who does not abstract from that which is given, who does not relate the facts to the factors which have made them, who does not — in his mind — undo the facts. Abstractness is the very life of thought, the token of its authenticity.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. 134

Life, Thinking

“Sir, there is a distinct difference between having an open mind and having a hole in your head from which your brain leaks out.”

James Randi (1928) Canadian-American stage magician and scientific skeptic

Swift, 30 December 2005,. "McGill University Featuring Pseudoscience" http://web.archive.org/web/20110108172522/http://www.randi.org/jr/200512/123005museum.html#i8 http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/living/17126222.htm April 24, 2007.