quotations about the mind
Nor fire, nor rocks, can stop our furious minds,
Nor waves, nor winds.
FRANCIS QUARLES
Emblems
In the human constitution, therefore, mind governs matter absolutely and despotically; but reason governs appetite with a far more limited sway.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Different minds incline to different objects; one pursues the vast alone, the wonderful, the wild; another sighs for harmony and grace, and gentlest beauty.
MARK AKENSIDE
The Pleasures of Imagination
Good books are to the young mind what the warming sun and the refreshing rain of spring are to the seeds which have lain dormant in the frosts of winter. They are more, for they may save from that which is worse than death, as well as bless with that which is better than life.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Matter is plastic in the face of Mind.
PHILIP K. DICK
Valis
A brilliant mind was never as clever as three average minds sniffing after something of interest.
ROBERT REED
"Precious Mental", Asimov's Science Fiction, June 1, 2013
An ill principle in the mind is worse than the matter of a disease in the body.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
You can, when you choose, sharpen the pencil of your mind to a very fine point. Specialize, my boy, specialize.
SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS
Average Jones
The mind has no kitchen to do its dirty work in while the parlor remains clean.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The mind is the main instrument to gain enlightenment, but enlightenment is only reached when the mind stops. Q: How can we stop the mind? A: Not hitting it with a hammer. Stop the mind by the mind.
BABA HARI DASS
Silence Speaks: from the chalkboard of Baba Hari Dass
The will ... is the driving force of the mind. If it's injured, the mind falls to pieces.
AUGUST STRINDBERG
The Father
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
Our mind is but a lump of clay
That Fate, grim potter, holds
On sorrow's wheel that rolls away,
And, as he pleases, moulds.
BHARTRHARI
"On Time the Destroyer"
Everyone's shut off their minds
So I'll turn on mine
CHESTER BENNINGTON
"Walking in Circles"
There is nothing mind can do that cannot be better done in the mind's immobility and thought-free stillness.
SRI AUROBINDO
Essays Divine and Human
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
Some minds are so unclothed that they are indecent.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
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
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
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