quotations about the mind
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
Just as iron which is not used grows rusty, and water putrefies and freezes in the cold, so the mind of which no use is made is spoilt.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
The propensity to excessive simplification is indeed natural to the mind of man, since it is only by abstraction and generalisation, which necessarily imply the neglect of a multitude of particulars, that he can stretch his puny faculties so as to embrace a minute portion of the illimitable vastness of the universe.
JAMES FRAZER
The Golden Bough
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
A good mind is a lord of a kingdom.
SENECA
Thyestes
For the retiring of the mind within itself is the state which is most susceptible of divine influxions; save that it is accompanied in this case with a fervency and elevation (which the ancients noted by fury), and not with a repose and quiet, as it is in the other.
FRANCIS BACON
The Advancement of Learning
Just as dogs love to chew bones, the mind loves to get its teeth into problems. That's why it does crossword puzzles and builds atom bombs.
ECKHART TOLLE
The Power of Now
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
Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind.
JEFFREY EUGENIDES
Middlesex
The heavens and the earth may be captured by the mind's eye.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
The Gospel of Buddha
Everyone's shut off their minds
So I'll turn on mine
CHESTER BENNINGTON
"Walking in Circles"
You must maintain strength of body in order to preserve strength of mind.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES
Reflections and Maxims
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
A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things, but cannot receive great ones.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
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
Of all the things I've lost, it's my mind I miss the most.
OZZY OSBOURNE
attributed, Foolish Words: The Most Stupid Words Ever Spoken
The mind is a challenge because it works more like a city than a household, with several networked links resonating at different times and with different subgroups of nodes, such that understanding the behavior of individuals or even of smaller groups won't tell the whole story of what's going on. No approach can capture the whole of what goes on over time in a large city like New York or Rio, even if a city is made of small neighborhoods -- and those neighborhoods, of a few individuals. One may capture certain mass events, like rush hour traffic or festivals, parades or open-air concerts, but not the global behavior of the city.
MARCELO GLEISER
"Science And The Mystery Of The Mind", NPR, November 29, 2017
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
I never met one interesting mind that was not richly endowed with inadmissible deficiencies.
EMIL CIORAN
The Trouble with Being Born
Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon