quotations about the mind
The march of the human mind is slow.
EDMUND BURKE
speech, March 22, 1775
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
The mind commands the body and immediately it obeys. The mind orders itself, and meets resistance.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
The Butlerian Jihad
The human mind is a channel through which things-to-be are coming into the realm of things-that-are.
HENRY FORD
Theosophist Magazine, February 1930
The minds of scholars are libraries; those of antiquaries, lumber-rooms; those of sportsmen, kennels; those of epicures, larders and cellars.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
God didn't give us minds just so we could refuse to use them.
DAVID WEBER
By Schism Rent Asunder
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 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
The mind is nothing less than a garden of inestimable value which man should strive to cultivate.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
If you would make your mind strong, you must give it strong food.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
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
Successful minds work like a gimlet--to a single point.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
speech at Harvard University, September 6, 1943
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
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