Mind Quotes

“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.

[Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Nov. 1980), pp. 16-32]”
― Barbara Tuchman

“Looking at beauty in the world, is the first step of purifying the mind.”
― Amit Ray, Meditation: Insights and Inspirations

“A man says a lot of things in summer he doesn't mean in winter.”
― Patricia Briggs, Dragon Blood

“Each thinking mind is a political mind.”
― Zaman Ali, HUMANITY Understanding Reality and Inquiring Good

“When you make a choice, you change the future.”
― Deepak Chopra

“The boldness of his mind was sheathed in a scabbard of politeness.”
― Dumas Malone, Jefferson the Virginian

“A man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind.”
― James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

“The mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this beautiful path, I walk in peace. With each step, the wind blows. With each step, a flower blooms.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

“Your battles inspired me - not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead.”
― James Joyce

“The energy of the mind is the essence of life.”
― Aristotle, The Philosophy of Aristotle

“Life is like a game of chess.
To win you have to make a move.
Knowing which move to make comes with IN-SIGHT
and knowledge, and by learning the lessons that are
acculated along the way.

We become each and every piece within the game called life!”
― Allan Rufus, The Master's Sacred Knowledge

“I mean, I have the feeling that something in my mind is poisoning everything else.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“The mind is just like a muscle - the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets and the more it can expand.”
― Idowu Koyenikan, Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability

“There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind - you are the one who hears it.”
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

“I haven’t been very impressed lately.
By people,
or places,
or the way someone said he loved me and then slowly changed his mind.”
― Charlotte Eriksson

“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Complete Tales and Poems

“To understand the immeasurable, the mind must be extraordinarily quiet, still.”
― J. Krishnamurti

“Most people believe the mind to be a mirror, more or less accurately reflecting the world outside them, not realizing on the contrary that the mind is itself the principal element of creation.”
― rabindranath tagore

“The mind of man is capable of anything.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“At that moment I had no mind to change, or not change, or throw against the nearest wall.”
― James Patterson

“Mathematics expresses values that reflect the cosmos, including orderliness, balance, harmony, logic, and abstract beauty.”
― Deepak Chopra

“All problems are illusions of the mind.”
― Eckhart Tolle, Practicing the Power of Now: Essential Teachings, Meditations, and Exercises From The Power of Now

“A tattoo is a true poetic creation, and is always more than meets the eye. As a tattoo is grounded on living skin, so its essence emotes a poignancy unique to the mortal human condition.”
― V. Vale, Re/Search #12: Modern Primitives

“It is foolish to wish for beauty. Sensible people never either desire it for themselves or care about it in others. If the mind be but well cultivated, and the heart well disposed, no one ever cares for the exterior.”
― Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey

“To know a man's library is, in some measure, to know a man's mind.”
― Geraldine Brooks, March

“The face is a picture of the mind with the eyes as its interpreter.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“When I am king they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.”
― Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

“The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that its center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.”
― Black Elk

“Never say that you can't do something, or that something seems impossible, or that something can't be done, no matter how discouraging or harrowing it may be; human beings are limited only by what we allow ourselves to be limited by: our own minds. We are each the masters of our own reality; when we become self-aware to this: absolutely anything in the world is possible.

Master yourself, and become king of the world around you. Let no odds, chastisement, exile, doubt, fear, or ANY mental virii prevent you from accomplishing your dreams. Never be a victim of life; be it's conqueror.”
― Mike Norton

“The ORDINARY RESPONSE TO ATROCITIES is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.

Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried. Equally as powerful as the desire to deny atrocities is the conviction that denial does not work. Folk wisdom is filled with ghosts who refuse to rest in their graves until their stories are told. Murder will out. Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims.

The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma. People who have survived atrocities often tell their stories in a highly emotional, contradictory, and fragmented manner that undermines their credibility and thereby serves the twin imperatives of truth-telling and secrecy. When the truth is finally recognized, survivors can begin their recovery. But far too often secrecy prevails, and the story of the traumatic event surfaces not as a verbal narrative but as a symptom.

The psychological distress symptoms of traumatized people simultaneously call attention to the existence of an unspeakable secret and deflect attention from it. This is most apparent in the way traumatized people alternate between feeling numb and reliving the event. The dialectic of trauma gives rise to complicated, sometimes uncanny alterations of consciousness, which George Orwell, one of the committed truth-tellers of our century, called "doublethink," and which mental health professionals, searching for calm, precise language, call "dissociation." It results in protean, dramatic, and often bizarre symptoms of hysteria which Freud recognized a century ago as disguised communications about sexual abuse in childhood. . . .”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror