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Mind Quotes

Shakespeare leads the mind page, with David Hume, Eckhart Tolle, Byron and Horace behind him. Russell’s The ABC of Relativity (1925) is the sourced standout, observing that we all tend to think the world must conform to our prejudices.

“What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind” has a messy history, and the notes tell it. It is credited to Thomas Hewitt Key, who is said to have sent it to Punch in the 1860s, but it had apparently been printed earlier in a magazine called The Month, and it has been given to other people too. “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve” is credited to W. Clement Stone and flagged misattributed. So is a line about the human mind progressing in spirals, credited to Madame de Staël.

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Most quoted on mind:

We are free to withdraw (to withdraw our minds where we cannot withdraw our bodies) from situations in which our humanity or lack of it is defined for us.

Saul Bellow A Jewish Writer in America (2011)

For they the mind of Christ discern
Who lean, like John, upon His breast.

John Greenleaf Whittier Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

I think it is not irreligion but a tidiness of mind, which rebels against the idea of permeating scientific research with a religious implication.

Arthur Eddington Science and the Unseen World (1929)

The Creator made women to please the eye and trouble the mind.

Robert Jordan The Fires of Heaven (1993)

The strain of suffering causes the mind to decay.

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot Posthumous Manuscripts (1878)

Thinking would not be possible at all if we were not social; we would have no words, no abstract ideas, and no energy for anything outside of immediate sensuality.

Randall Collins The Sociology of Philosophies (1998)

Turn your churches into halls of science, and devote your leisure day to the study of your own bodies, the analysis of your own minds, and the examination of the fair material world which extends around you!

Frances Wright A Course of Popular Lectures (1829)

There are two thoughts that will ensure success in all you do; (1) Don't tell everything you know, and (2) until Ace Ventura, no actor had considered talking through his ass.

Jim Carrey Major in Success (2003)

Our life is determined for us — and it makes the mind very free when we give up wishing and only think of bearing what is laid upon us and doing what is given us to do.

George Eliot The Mill on the Floss (1860)

The mind is like the stomach. It is not how much you put into it that counts, but how much it digests — if you try to feed it with a shovel you get bad results.

Albert Jay Nock

None but right acts can follow right thoughts; none but a right life can follow right acts; and by living a right life all blessedness is achieved.

James Allen

We have discovered in this past decade that thinking, and decision, are not solely the province of the metaphysicist, but are appropriate subjects for scientific inquiry.

Robert E. Machol Information and Decision Processes (1960)

In any concrete act of thinking the mind’s active experience is both intuitive and intellectual.

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

Truly, thoughts are things, and their scope of operation is the world, itself. p. 87

Napoleon Hill Think and Grow Rich (1938)

You have your thoughts and I have mine. This is the fact and you can't change it even if you kill me.

Ba Jin

No useless discourse. All conversation which does not serve to enlighten ourselves or others, to interest the heart or amuse the mind, is hurtful.

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot Posthumous Manuscripts (1878)

My manners, abominable at times, can be sweet. As I grew older I became a drunk. Why? Because I like ecstasy of the mind. I'm a wretch. But I love, love.

Jack Kerouac Satori in Paris (1966)

I speak my mind. If it offends some people, well, there's not much I can do about that. But I'm going to be honest. I'm going to continue to speak my mind, and that's who I am...

Jesse Ventura

If we only knew, the sacred value, And if the might of our pen, is stronger than the swords of men, let us unsheathe our minds, write with our hearts again.

Dawud Wharnsby For Whom The Troubadour Sings (2010)

I talk half the time to find out my own thoughts, as a school-boy turns his pockets inside out to see what is in them. One brings to light all sorts of personal property he had forgotten in his inventory.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872)

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