Mind Quotes

The mind, a key focus for philosophers and psychologists, is difficult to clearly define. It is our set of mental processes — but “mental” simply means relating to or taking place in the mind. The mind is clearly a product of the brain’s activities, and yet our mind has the power to change how our brains function. Our mind can perceive our own mind, and the minds of others. What have some thinkers said about the mind?

If a man will comprehend the richness and variety of the universe, and inspire his mind with a due measure of wonder and awe, he must contemplate the human intellect not only on its heights of genius but in its abysses of ineptitude….

People are just about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training.

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.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Sometimes we drug ourselves with dreams of new ideas. The head will save us. The brain alone will set us free. But there are no new ideas waiting in the wings to save us as women, as human. There are only old and forgotten ones, new combinations, extrapolations and recognitions from within ourselves — along with the renewed courage to try them out.

A woman past forty should make up her mind to be young; not her face.

I don’t think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking there’s some kind of change.

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn the past, not to worry about the future, or not to anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.

Everything is based on mind, is led by mind, is fashioned by mind. If you speak and act with a polluted mind, suffering will follow you, as the wheels of the oxcart follow the footsteps of the ox. Everything is based on mind, is led by mind, is fashioned by mind. If you speak and act with a pure mind, happiness will follow you, as a shadow clings to a form.

We must learn that competence is better than extravagance, that worth is better than wealth, that the golden calf we have worshiped has no more brains than that one of old which the Hebrews worshiped. So beware of money and of money’s worth as the supreme passion of the mind. Beware of the craving for enormous acquisition.

The creative mind plays with the object it loves.

It is exercise alone that supports the spirits, and keeps the mind in vigor.

When the heart is right, the mind and the body will follow.

By linking a wide range of disciplines together, we offer this definition of one aspect of the mind as the emergent, self-organizing, embodied, and relational process that regulates the flow of energy and information. This view enables us to see energy and information flow as the fundamental element of a system from which the mind arises.

Where is this system? This flow occurs both within the body, including its brain, as well as in the sharing of energy and information between an individual and others and the environment in which the person lives.

What kind of system is this? The characteristics of this system include that it is open, capable of being chaotic, and non-linear, meaning that small inputs lead to large and difficult to predict results. Complex systems have emergent properties that arise from the interaction of the elements of the system; one of those processes is self-organization. And so the proposal is that one aspect of mind is this embodied and relational process that emerges from, and then regulates, energy and information flow within an individual (the embodied aspect) and between the individual and the world around (the relational aspect).

By offering a definition of the mind, we can see how the mind is both within us and between us, within the body and the brain, and within the relational connections we have with one another and the world around us. Our work as clinicians is greatly aided with this definition. It allows us to work with our relationships and our embodied brains in trying to move an individual’s life toward more integration in a range of domains — from how we connect with one another with respect, to how we link different aspects of our brain to each other.

Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.

Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.

The body keeps the score: If the memory of trauma is encoded in the viscera, in heartbreaking and gut-wrenching emotions, in autoimmune disorders and skeletal/muscular problems, and if mind/brain, visceral communication is the royal road to emotion regulation, this demands a radical shift in our therapeutic assumptions…. The challenge of recovery is to reestablish ownership of your body and your mind — of your self. This means feeling free to know what you know and feel what you feel without becoming overwhelmed, enraged, ashamed, or collapsed.

The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.

The ultimate aim of the human mind, in all its efforts, is to become acquainted with Truth.

The truest greatness lies in being kind, the truest wisdom in a happy mind.

Above all things physical, it is more important to be beautiful on the inside – to have a big heart and an open mind and a spectacular spleen.

Heaven is so far of the Mind
That were the Mind dissolved—
The Site—of it—by Architect
Could not again be proved—
‘Tis vast—as our Capacity—
As fair—as our idea—
To Him of adequate desire
No further ’tis, than Here—

The Brain — is wider than the Sky —
For — put them side by side —
The one the other will contain
With ease — and You — beside —

The Brain is deeper than the sea —
For — hold them — Blue to Blue —
The one the other will absorb —
As Sponges — Buckets — do —

The Brain is just the weight of God —
For — Heft them — Pound for Pound —
And they will differ — if they do —
As Syllable from Sound —

Though aware that our knowledge is incomplete, that our truth is partial, that our love is imperfect, we believe that new light is ever waiting to break through individual hearts and minds.

Let the mind be enlarged… to the grandeur of the mysteries, and not the mysteries contracted to the narrowness of the mind.

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.

Beauty isn’t worth thinking about; what’s important is your mind. You don’t want a fifty-dollar haircut on a fifty-cent head.

The human mind isn’t a computer; it cannot progress in an orderly fashion down a list of candidate moves and rank them by a score down to the hundredth of a pawn the way a chess machine does. Even the most disciplined human mind wanders in the heat of competition. This is both a weakness and a strength of human cognition. Sometimes these undisciplined wanderings only weaken your analysis. Other times they lead to inspiration, to beautiful or paradoxical moves that were not on your initial list of candidates.

The wisest mind has something yet to learn.

Man’s duty is to improve himself; to cultivate his mind; and, when he finds himself going astray, to bring the moral law to bear upon himself.

Man’s greatest asset is the unsettled mind.

I’m a nonviolent soldier. In place of weapons of violence, you have to use your mind, your heart, your sense of humor, every faculty available to you because no one has the right to take the life of another human being.

Mind as a concrete thing is precisely the power to understand things in terms of the use made of them; a socialized mind is the power to understand them in terms of the use to which they are turned in joint or shared situations. And mind in this sense is the method of social control.

Skepticism: the mark and even the pose of the educated mind.

Whether we grow more gross, more selfish, more grasping, more vulgar, more dishonorable, or whether we grow more delicate, more tender, more sympathetic, more aspiring, or more affectionate does not depend on whether we think the mind quantitative or qualitative. It depends on what we think of the values of those qualities. And I for one choose so-called spiritual qualities of mind and character because for me they contain the most enduring and highest joys of earth. Therefore, in this practical sense I am a firm believer in the spiritual life. And when I use the term as I frequently do, it is in this sense that I use it.

Peace is not achieved by controlling nations, but mastering our thoughts.

Compassion is the strong wish of the mind and heart to alleviate suffering.

To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.

To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.

I think… if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.

Freedom, I found is not only in the running but in the heart, the mind, the hands.

We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery, for though others may free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind. Mind is our only ruler; sovereign.

When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself.

The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live.

We have to realize that part of helping is keeping our clarity of mind, keeping our hearts and our minds open.

New insights fail to get put into practice because they conflict with deeply held internal images of how the world works … images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting. That is why the discipline of managing mental models — surfacing, testing, and improving our internal pictures of how the world works — promises to be a major breakthrough for learning organizations.

Health is the state of mind where mind, body, and actions are in harmony.