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
Everyone's shut off their minds
So I'll turn on mine
CHESTER BENNINGTON
"Walking in Circles"
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"
A good mind is a lord of a kingdom.
SENECA
Thyestes
All civilization in a sense exists only in the mind. Gunpowder, textile arts, machinery, laws, telephones are not themselves transmitted from man to man or from generation to generation, at least not permanently. It is the perception, the knowledge and understanding of them, their ideas in the Platonic sense, that are passed along. Everything social can have existence only through mentality.
ALFRED L. KROEBER
The Superorganic
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
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
Empires will fall--dynasties fade away; but the mind of man will survive the destruction of all inanimate matter--its destiny is eternal.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
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
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
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
The mind is free, whate'er afflict the man,
A King's a King, do Fortune what she can.
MICHAEL DRAYTON
The Barrons' Wars
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
Without the mind, sensuality quite has no organs to call her own!
J. D. SALINGER
"Hapworth 16, 1924"
Yoga is the cessation of mind.
PATANJALI
The Yoga Sutras
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
I never met one interesting mind that was not richly endowed with inadmissible deficiencies.
EMIL CIORAN
The Trouble with Being Born
There are materials enough in every man's mind to make a hell there.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
"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