quotations about the mind
There is not an enemy so stout, as to storm and take the fortress of the mind,
Unless its infirmity turn traitor, and Fear unbar the gates.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
The unconscious is the larger circle which includes within itself the smaller circle of the conscious; everything conscious has its preliminary step in the unconscious, whereas the unconscious may stop with this step and still claim full value as a psychic activity. Properly speaking, the unconscious is the real psychic; its inner nature is just as unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and it is just as imperfectly reported to us through the data of consciousness as is the external world through the indications of our sensory organs.
SIGMUND FREUD
Dream Psychology: Psychoanalysis for Beginners
It's a good thing to turn your mind upside down now and then, like an hour-glass, to let the particles run the other way.
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
The Haunted Bookshop
Yoga is the cessation of mind.
PATANJALI
The Yoga Sutras
Some minds are so unclothed that they are indecent.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
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
He is the happiest man who is engaged in a business which tasks the most faculties of his mind.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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
It is in our own mind and not in exterior objects that we perceive most things; fools know scarcely anything because they are empty, and their heart is narrow; but great souls find in themselves a number of exterior things; they have no need to read or to travel or to listen or to work to discover the highest truths; they have only to delve into themselves and search, if we may say so, their own thoughts.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES
Reflections and Maxims
The immortal mind, superior to his fate, amid the outrage of external things, firm as the solid base of this great world, rests on his own foundation. Blow, ye winds! Ye waves! ye thunders! roll your tempests on! Shake, ye old pillars of the marble sky! Till at its orbs and all its worlds of fire be loosen'd from their seats; yet still serene, the unconquer'd mind looks down upon the wreck; and ever stronger as the storms advance, firm through the closing ruin holds is way, when nature calls him to the destin'd goal.
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
Without the mind, sensuality quite has no organs to call her own!
J. D. SALINGER
"Hapworth 16, 1924"
The mind is free, whate'er afflict the man,
A King's a King, do Fortune what she can.
MICHAEL DRAYTON
The Barrons' Wars
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
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
Here in your mind you have complete privacy. Here there's no difference between what is and what could be.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Choke
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
Everyone's shut off their minds
So I'll turn on mine
CHESTER BENNINGTON
"Walking in Circles"
Failing to understand the workings of one's own mind is bound to lead to unhappiness.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
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