Mental Power Quotes - Page 2

• Selfishness and demagoguery take advantage of liberty. The selfish hand constantly seeks to control government, and every increase of governmental power, even to meet just needs, furnishes opportunity for abuse and stimulates the effort to bend it to improper uses.

  Charles Evans Hughes

  Selfish, Opportunity, Government

  Charles Evans Hughes (1910). “Conditions of Progress in Democratic Government”

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• The yogin becomes aware in part of the action of the supramental power organizing the lower vehicle (ādhāra). A part of it remains behind the veil and prepares itself.

  Sri Aurobindo

  Veils, Action, Vehicle

  Source: overmanfoundation.wordpress.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is a limited elite that understands the secrets of their own techniques, but not necessarily of all techniques. These men are close to the seat of modern governmental power. The state is no longer founded on the 'average citizen', but on the ability and knowledge of this elite. The average man is altogether unable to penetrate technical secrets or governmental organization and consequently can exert no influence at all on the state.

  Jacques Ellul

  Men, Average, Organization

  "The Technological Society" by Jacques Ellul, translated by John Wilkinson, (p. 274), 1964.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• A century ago mainstream science was still quite happy to countenance vital and mental powers which had a 'downwards' causal influence on the physical realm in a straightforwardly interactionist way. It was only in the middle of the last century that science finally concluded that there are no such non-physical forces. At which point a whole pile of smart philosophers (Feigl, Smart, Putnam, Davidson, Lewis) quickly pointed out that mental, biological and social phenomena must themselves be physical, in order to produce the physical effects that they do.

  David Papineau

  Smart, Order, Way

  "Physical". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. April 8, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What we really need to understand here is that it`s all about power. This is where the surge is coming from for Bernie Sanders. In some ways, it`s a very different - it`s a different surge, but it`s coming out of the same sort of sense of fundamental powerlessness and anger and frustration for Donald Trump.

  Robert Reich

  Frustration, Different, Needs

  Source: www.msnbc.com

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's true that the level of scientific knowledge among adults is very low, but that's not because there isn't a natural interest. I think most kids are fascinated by the natural world. I've often said that if you could quantify the mental power involved in all the dinosaur names correctly known and correctly spelled by 5-year-old kids in America, you could move any mountain on earth.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Moving, Kids, Thinking

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• With the conception that the Revolution was only a means of securing political power, it was inevitable that all revolutionary values should be subordinated to the needs of the Socialist State; indeed, exploited to further the security of the newly acquired governmental power.

  Emma Goldman

  Mean, Political, Needs

  Emma Goldman (2003). “My Disillusionment in Russia”, p.259, Courier Corporation

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The mental powers acquire their full robustness when the cheek loses its ruddy hue, and the limbs their elastic step; and pale thought sits on manly brows, and the watchman, as he walks his rounds, sees the student's lamp burning far into the silent night.

  Thomas Guthrie

  Night, Age, Lamps

  Thomas Guthrie (1857). “The city, its sins and sorrows: being a series of sermons from Luke XIX.41”, p.17

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Although we refer to the International Criminal Court, the real problem is the prosecutor, because it's the prosecutor who decides who to investigate and what cases to bring. This court fundamentally embodied a potential for abuse of governmental power that I felt was inconsistent with being a free person - and [it was] inconsistent for a free country like the United States to subscribe to it.

  John Bolton

  Country, Real, Abuse

  Source: www.pbs.org

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• The teacher has nothing to do with people who use their mental powers to block the enlightenment of others. These people lack control. What can you teach someone who lacks control?

  Frederick Lenz

  Teacher, Buddhist, Block

  4 Copy quote

• Successful investment may become substantially a matter of techniques and criteria that are learnable, rather than the product of unique and incommunicable mental powers.

  Benjamin Graham

  Successful, Unique, Technique

  Benjamin Graham (1959). “The Intelligent Investor: A Book of Practical Counsel”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Solitude either develops the mental power, or renders men dull and vicious.

  Victor Hugo

  Men, Solitude, Dull

  Victor Hugo (2016). “Toilers of the Sea”, p.45, Victor Hugo

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is an inherent tendency in all governmental power to recognize no restraints on its operation and to extend the sphere of its dominion as much as possible. To control everything, to leave no room for anything to happen of its own accord without the interference of the authorities--th is is the goal for which every ruler secretly strives.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Goal, Dominion, Rooms

  Ludwig von Mises (2016). “Liberalism: The Classical Tradition: The Economist”, p.53, VM eBooks

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Earnestness is the best gift of mental power, and deficiency of heart is the cause of many men never becoming great.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Heart, Greatness, Men

  9 Copy quote

• It is a monstrous thing to force a child to learn Latin or Greek or mathematics on the ground that they are an indispensable gymnastic for the mental powers. It would be monstrous even if it were true.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Children, Latin, Learning

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “George Bernard Shaw: The Collected Plays (Illustrated): 60 plays including Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, Saint Joan, The Apple Cart, Cymbeline, Androcles And The Lion, The Man Of Destiny, The Inca Of Perusalem and Macbeth Skit”, p.2005, e-artnow

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Now comes the second machine age. Computers and other digital advances are doing for mental power - the ability to use our brains to understand and shape our environments-what the steam engine and its descendants did for muscle power.

  Erik Brynjolfsson

  Brain, Age, Machines

  "The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies". Book by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, 2014.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Constitution was framed fundamentally as a bulwark against governmental power, and preventing the arbitrary administration of punishment is a basic ideal of any society that purports to be governed by the rule of law.

  William J. Brennan

  Law, Punishment, Arbitrary

  "McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279". Dissenting opinion, 1987.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Mental power cannot be got from ill-fed brains.

  Herbert Spencer

  Brain, Feds, Ill

  Herbert Spencer (1919). “Synthetic Philosophy ...”

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• Quite a different thing is, if a seeker, dissatisfied by materialism and doctrines, and longing for spiritual support, will ask advice and information of an adept. In such a case the adept is obliged to supply the seeker with spiritual light and insight, according to his mental powers. Then the magician should spare neither time nor pains to communicate his spiritual treasures and lead the seeker to the light.

  Franz Bardon

  Spiritual, Pain, Light

  11 Copy quote

• It is certain that there may be extraordinary mental activity with an extremely small absolute mass of nervous matter: thus the wonderfully diversified instincts, mental powers, and affections of ants are notorious, yet their cerebral ganglia are not so large as the quarter of a small pin's head. Under this point of view, the brain of an ant is one of the most marvelous atoms of matter in the world, perhaps more so than the brain of a man.

  Charles Darwin

  Men, Views, Brain

  Charles Darwin (1884). “Darwinism Stated by Darwin Himself: Characteristic Passages from the Writings of Charles Darwin”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• This all-pervading power is the power of divine love. It thinks. It organizes. It plans. It loves. It is the one which is the subtle of the ether, you can call it. It is the subtle of the matter. It is the subtle of your emotions. It is the subtle of your mental power. It is the subtle of your evolutionary power, but all integrated and coordinated in complete synchronization.

  Nirmala Srivastava

  Love, Wisdom, Yoga

  4 Copy quote

• Some champions of ever-greater governmental power and spending invent the theory that the taxpayers, left to themselves, spend the money they have earned very foolishly, on all sorts of trivialities and rubbish, and that only the bureaucrats, by first seizing it from them, will know how to spend it wisely.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Champion, Rubbish, Firsts

  Henry Hazlitt (1971). “Man Vs. the Welfare State”, p.210, Ludwig von Mises Institute

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I tried to will them with my super mental powers so he’d put them around my waist, but apparently I had no super mental powers.

  J.A. Redmerski

  4 Copy quote

• We don’t constrain our mental powers when we store new long-term memories. We strengthen them. With each expansion of our memory comes an enlargement of our intelligence. The Web provides a convenient and compelling supplement to personal memory - but when we start using the Web as a substitute for personal memory, by bypassing the inner processes of consolidation, we risk emptying our minds of their riches.

  Nicholas G. Carr

  Memories, Long, Risk

  Nicholas G. Carr (2010). “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains”, p.192, W. W. Norton & Company

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• This is peculiarly an age in which each of us may, if he do but search diligently, find the literature suited to his mental powers.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Age, Literature, May

  P. G. Wodehouse (2012). “Something New: Or, Something Fresh”, p.67, The Floating Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source