quotations about the mind
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
In activities other than purely logical thought, our minds function much faster than any computer yet devised.
DANIEL CREVIER
AI: The Tumultuous History of the Search for Artificial Intelligence
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
The mind, when compelled, by education or other circumstances, to receive irrational doctrines, has yet a power of keeping them, as it were, on its surface, of excluding them from its depths, of refusing to incorporate them with its own being; and when burdened with a mixed and incongruous system, it often discovers a sagacity which reminds us of the instinct of inferior animals, in selecting the healthful and nutritious portions, and in making them its daily food.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in; it stains the ancient mass; but it is also tinged by what absorbs it.
WILLIAM JAMES
Lecture V, "Pragmatism and Common Sense", Pragmatism
A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things, but cannot receive great ones.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Few minds wear out; more rust out.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
First, then, I say, that the mind, which we often call the intellect, in which is placed the conduct and government of life, is not less an integral part of man himself, than the hand, and foot, and eyes, are portions of the whole animal.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
Like the mind, the computer is useful because it produces information. Computers are also functional because they are able to produce a wide variety of responses that mimic human abilities. As the brain has been compared with the computer, the idea that the mind is a mechanical entity has become more plausible. For example, just as the computer operates on electricity, the brain is now described as an object comprised of electronically sensitive cells or neuron networks. Although the nervous system, which is the controlling agent for the body, continues to be shrouded in mystery, many investigators have found it attractive to equate the mind with the brain and to identify both with the computer.
VICENTE BERDAYES
Computers, Human Interaction, and Organizations
Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
There are tumults of the mind, when, like the great convulsions of Nature, all seems anarchy and returning chaos; yet often, in those moments of vast disturbance, as in the strife of Nature itself, some new principle of order, or some new impulse of conduct, develops itself, and controls, and regulates, and brings to an harmonious consequence, passions and elements which seem only to threaten despair and subversion.
WILLIAM GIBSON
The Difference Engine
A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.
SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
When I think of myself my mind cannot soar to higher things but is like a bird with broken wings.
TERESA OF AVILA
The Interior Castle
There are materials enough in every man's mind to make a hell there.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
In the world of mind, as in that of matter, we always occupy a position. He who is continually changing his point of view will see more, and that too more clearly, than one who, statue-like, forever stands upon the same pedestal; however lofty and well-placed that pedestal may be.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
I never met one interesting mind that was not richly endowed with inadmissible deficiencies.
EMIL CIORAN
The Trouble with Being Born
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
What we call a mind is nothing but a heap or collection of different perceptions, united together by certain relations and supposed, though falsely, to be endowed with a perfect simplicity and identity.
DAVID HUME
A Treatise of Human Nature
Our mind is but a lump of clay
That Fate, grim potter, holds
On sorrow's wheel that rolls away,
And, as he pleases, moulds.
BHARTRHARI
"On Time the Destroyer"
Empires will fall--dynasties fade away; but the mind of man will survive the destruction of all inanimate matter--its destiny is eternal.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims