quotations about the mind
I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Doctor Rush, September 23, 1800
As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free. Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon against the long night of physical slavery.
MARTIN LUTHER KING
speech, August 16, 1967
Yoga is the cessation of mind.
PATANJALI
The Yoga Sutras
When I think of myself my mind cannot soar to higher things but is like a bird with broken wings.
TERESA OF AVILA
The Interior Castle
What we call a mind is nothing but a heap or collection of different perceptions, united together by certain relations and supposed, though falsely, to be endowed with a perfect simplicity and identity.
DAVID HUME
A Treatise of Human Nature
The mind is the attribute of man. When man is born, he comes into existence with only one weapon with him--The reasoning mind.
AYN RAND
The Fountainhead
The mind is international and supra-national ... it ought to serve not war and annihilation, but peace and reconciliation.
HERMANN HESSE
letter read at Nobel banquet, December 10, 1946
Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.
JOHN ADAMS
attributed, Looking Toward Sunset: From Sources Old and New, Original and Selected
In the world of mind, as in that of matter, we always occupy a position. He who is continually changing his point of view will see more, and that too more clearly, than one who, statue-like, forever stands upon the same pedestal; however lofty and well-placed that pedestal may be.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
A good mind is a lord of a kingdom.
SENECA
Thyestes
Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
There are tumults of the mind, when, like the great convulsions of Nature, all seems anarchy and returning chaos; yet often, in those moments of vast disturbance, as in the strife of Nature itself, some new principle of order, or some new impulse of conduct, develops itself, and controls, and regulates, and brings to an harmonious consequence, passions and elements which seem only to threaten despair and subversion.
WILLIAM GIBSON
The Difference Engine
Persons without minds are like weeds that delight in good earth; they want to be amused by others, all the more because they are dull within.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Vicar of Tours
In activities other than purely logical thought, our minds function much faster than any computer yet devised.
DANIEL CREVIER
AI: The Tumultuous History of the Search for Artificial Intelligence
If the human mind naturally produces noisome weeds, it also produces flowers and fruit; and ... the best method to mend the soil in general, is for each of us to cultivate his own particular spot.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
For me, the adventures of the mind, each inflection of thought, each movement, nuance, growth, discovery, is a source of exhilaration.
ANAIS NIN
diary, November 1933
Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in; it stains the ancient mass; but it is also tinged by what absorbs it.
WILLIAM JAMES
Lecture V, "Pragmatism and Common Sense", Pragmatism
A truly open mind means forcing our imaginations to conform to the evidence of reality, and not vice versa.
LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS
A Universe from Nothing
A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.
SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
"I must really improve my Mind," I tell myself, and once more begin to patch and repair that crazy structure. So I toil and toil on at the vain task of edification, though the wind tears off the tiles, the floors give way, the ceilings fall, strange birds build untidy nests in the rafters, and owls hoot and laugh in the tumbling chimneys.
LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH
Trivia