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
The heavens and the earth may be captured by the mind's eye.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
The Gospel of Buddha
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
Yoga is the cessation of mind.
PATANJALI
The Yoga Sutras
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
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
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
Everyone's shut off their minds
So I'll turn on mine
CHESTER BENNINGTON
"Walking in Circles"
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
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
Who knows the mind has the key to all things else.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
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
The mind is free, whate'er afflict the man,
A King's a King, do Fortune what she can.
MICHAEL DRAYTON
The Barrons' Wars
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
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
There are materials enough in every man's mind to make a hell there.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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
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"
My mind changes often ... People who have no mind can easily be steadfast and firm, but when a man is loaded down to the guards with it, as I am, every heavy sea of foreboding or inclination, maybe of indolence, shifts the cargo.
MARK TWAIN
letter to James Redpath, August 8, 1871