quotations about the mind
The mind is the pilot. We think of things before the body does them.
WALT DISNEY
attributed, The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation
The mind is nothing less than a garden of inestimable value which man should strive to cultivate.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
The mind is a mill which can incessant turn, 'til its mere operation focus the stress inward and the stones grind themselves to dust.
DAVID MAMET
Faustus
Small minds cannot grasp great ideas; to their narrow comprehension, their purblind vision, nothing seems really great and important but themselves.
JAMES FRAZER
The Golden Bough
It is not that science is unable to ever figure out the mind, or that the problem of understanding the mind is that we can't step out of it. The problem is that this kind of approach, focused on local cause and effect mechanics within the brain, on neurons firing across their synaptic connections, is doomed to fail.
MARCELO GLEISER
"Science And The Mystery Of The Mind", NPR, November 29, 2017
Babylon in all its desolation is a sight not so awful as that of the human mind in ruins.
SCROPE BERDMORE DAVIES
letter to Thomas Raikes, May, 1835
As an orchard when manured produces pleasant trees and luscious fruit, so does a cultivated mind produce pure thoughts and noble actions.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
The free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for it is the one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.
JOHN STEINBECK
East of Eden
The human mind works at low efficiency. Twenty percent is the figure usually given. When, momentarily, there is a flash of greater power it is termed a hunch, or insight, or intuition.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Foundation and Empire
The mind commands the body and immediately it obeys. The mind orders itself, and meets resistance.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
The Butlerian Jihad
My mind to me a kingdom is,
Such perfect joy therein I find,
That it excels all other bliss
That world affords or grows by kind.
EDWARD DYER
My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is
The mind is not some organ that does the sense-making. That role belongs to the brain. The mind is a product of our sense-making activity. It is what our sense-making postulates when it tries to make sense of itself.
CARL BEREITER
Education and Mind in the Knowledge Age
If you would make your mind strong, you must give it strong food.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
speech at Harvard University, September 6, 1943
Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.
JOHN ADAMS
letter to John Quincy Adams, November 13, 1816
The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.
JEROME BRUNER
"The Psychology of Learning", Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 1968