quotations about the mind
The heavens and the earth may be captured by the mind's eye.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
The Gospel of Buddha
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
A good mind is a lord of a kingdom.
SENECA
Thyestes
Mind unemployed is mind unenjoyed.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
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
Here in your mind you have complete privacy. Here there's no difference between what is and what could be.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Choke
A Man has always the voice of his mind.
PIERRE-ANTOINE BERRYER
attributed, Words of Human Wisdom
You must maintain strength of body in order to preserve strength of mind.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES
Reflections and Maxims
Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
His mind was like the sea itself: troubled, and too deep for the bravest man's descent, throwing up now and again, for the naked eye to wonder at, treasure and debris long forgotten on the bottom--bones and jewels, fantastic shells, jelly that had once been flesh, pearls that had once been eyes. And he was at the mercy of this sea, hanging there with darkness all around him.
JAMES BALDWIN
Go Tell It on the Mountain
The mind goes on working no matter how we try to hold it back.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune
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
It is the mind that maketh good or ill,
That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.
EDMUND SPENSER
The Faerie Queene
Failing to understand the workings of one's own mind is bound to lead to unhappiness.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
To see a thing clearly in the mind makes it begin to take form.
HENRY FORD
Theosophist Magazine, February 1930
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
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
Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.
JOHN ADAMS
attributed, Looking Toward Sunset: From Sources Old and New, Original and Selected
A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things, but cannot receive great ones.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust