Human Mind Quotes - Page 5

• The guarantees of civil liberty are but guarantees of freedom of the human mind and spirit and of reasonable freedom and opportunity to express them...The very essence of the liberty which they guarantee is the freedom of the individual from compulsion as to what he shall think and what he shall say...

  Harlan F. Stone

  Opportunity, Thinking, Essence

  Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586, (604), 1940.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nobody, I believe, will deny, that we are to form our judgment of the true nature of the human mind, not from sloth and stupidity of the most degenerate and vilest of men, but from the sentiments and fervent desires of the best and wisest of the species.

  Robert B. Leighton

  Believe, Men, Stupidity

  7 Copy quote

• The speed of the human mind is remarkable. So is its inability to face the obvious.

  Simon Mawer

  Mind, Inability, Denial

  Simon Mawer (2011). “The Gospel Of Judas”, p.132, Hachette UK

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The branches of mathematics are as various as the sciences to which they belong, and each subject of physical enquiry has its appropriate mathematics. In every form of material manifestation, there is a corresponding form of human thought, so that the human mind is as wide in its range of thought as the physical universe in which it thinks.

  Benjamin Peirce

  Thinking, Mind, Enquiry

  "Linear Associative Algebra" by Benjamin Peirce, (§ 2), 1882.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The authority of Plato and Aristotle, of Zeno and Epicurus, still reigned in the schools; and their systems, transmitted with blind deference from one generation of disciples to another, precluded every generous attempt to exercise the powers, or enlarge the limits, of the human mind.

  Edward Gibbon

  Plato, School, Exercise

  Edward Gibbon (1840). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1”, p.55

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are spiritual patterns at work in the universe and these announce themselves with impressive regularity wherever human minds and hearts attempt to attune themselves to the cosmos in all its radiant dimensions.

  Ken Wilber

  Spiritual, Heart, Unity

  4 Copy quote

• Psychotherapy -- A long, drawn out process consisting of subtle probings of the human mind, whereby women are blamed for all of Freud's shortcomings.

  Marc Cooper

  Long, Mind, Subtle

  5 Copy quote

• By becoming aware of the dignity of the mind, we realize the true ground of the dignity of man and therewith the goodness of the world, whither we understand it as created or uncreated, which is the home of man because it is the home of the human mind.

  Leo Strauss

  Home, Men, Mind

  "Liberalism Ancient and Modern". Book by Leo Strauss, 1968.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The human mind and the entire life process is chaotic. Chaos is not something that lacks order; chaos has varieties of order within it.

  Frederick Lenz

  Philosophy, Order, Mind

  4 Copy quote

• Among the many inconsistencies which folly produces or infirmity suffers in the human mind, there has often been observed a manifest and striking contrariety between the life of an author and his writings... Those whom the appearance of virtue or the evidence of genius has tempted to a nearer knowledge of the writer, in whose performances they may be found, have indeed had frequent reason to repent their curiosity.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Curiosity, Mind

  Samuel Johnson (1977). “Selected Poetry and Prose”, p.163, Univ of California Press

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• In my opinion, Marxism is a great creed of human liberation. It is the creed which says that when all other empires fade and vanish, our business is to enlarge the empire of the human mind.

  Michael Foot

  Mind, Empires, Opinion

  Morning Star, 1980.

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• This is the universal property of the human mind. Abstract rules form the core of everything from computer programs to grammars. Our results show that babies' minds are built to look for such rules - even without being told.

  Gary Marcus

  Baby, Mind, Looks

  6 Copy quote

• Art is the principal way in which the human mind has tried to remake the world in a way that makes sense. The carefully edited, slow-motion, action replay of a rugby tackle, a car crash or a sex act has more significance than the original event. Thanks to virtual reality, we will soon be moving into a world where a heightened super-reality will consist entirely of action replays, and reality will therefore be all the more rich and meaningful.

  J. G. Ballard

  Meaningful, Art, Sex

  "JG Ballard: Theatre of Cruelty". Interview with Jean-Paul Coillard, www.jgballard.ca. 1998.

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• Most SF is about madness, or what is currently ruled to be madness; this is part of its attraction - it's always playing with how much the human mind can encompass.

  Brian Aldiss

  Mind, Madness, Humans

  "In Conversation: Brian Aldiss & James Blish". Cypher, October 1973.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• In products of the human mind, simplicity marks the end of a process of refining, while complexity marks a primitive stage. Michelangelo 's definition of art as the purgation of superfluities suggests that the creative effort consists largely in the elimination of that which complicates and confuses a pattern.

  Eric Hoffer

  Art, Simplicity, Effort

  "Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook" by Tom Bethell in Harper's Magazine, July 2005.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Chaos theory simply suggests that what appears to most people as chaos is not really chaotic, but a series of different types of orders with which the human mind has not yet become familiar.

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, Science, Order

  5 Copy quote

• Whatever conclusions we reach about the reality of God, the history of this idea must tell us something important about the human mind and the nature of our aspiration.

  Karen Armstrong

  Reality, Ideas, Mind

  4 Copy quote

• As anyone who has ever been around a cat for any length of time well knows, cats have enormous patience with the limitations of the human mind. They realize that, whether they like it or not, they are simply going to have to put up with what to them are excruciatingly slow mental processes, that we humans have embarrassingly low I.Q.'s, and that probably because of these defects, we have an infuriating inability to understand, let alone follow, even the simplist and most explicit of directions.

  Cleveland Amory

  Cat, Mind, Inability

  Cleveland Amory (2002). “The cat who came for Christmas ; The cat and the curmudgeon ; The best cat ever”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Mathematical analysis is as extensive as nature itself; it defines all perceptible relations, measures times, spaces, forces, temperatures:;; this difficult science is formed slowly, but it preserves every principle which it has once acquired; it grows and strengthens itself incessantly in the midst of the many variations and errors of the human mind. It's chief attribute is clearness; it has no marks to express confused notations. It brings together phenomena the most diverse, and discovers the hidden analogies which unite them.

  Joseph Fourier

  Confused, Errors, Space

  Joseph Fourier (2007). “The Analytical Theory of Heat”, p.7, Cosimo, Inc.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• The human mind may know God, and learn of God, though it has no terms by which to explain Him; it may think of Him as Absolute, as Infinite, as Personal, while it may never in this life be able to fathom the full meaning of these sublime ideas.

  George C. Lorimer

  Thinking, Ideas, Mind

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert (p. 267), 1895.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are for man only two principles available for a mental grasp of reality, namely, those of teleology and causality. What cannot be brought under either of these categories is absolutely hidden to the human mind. An event not open to an interpretation by one of these two principles is for man inconceivable and mysterious. Change can be conceived as the outcome either of the operation of mechanistic causality or of purposeful behavior; for the human mind there is no third way available.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Truth, Learning, Knowledge

  4 Copy quote

• Television is a new, hard test of our wisdom. If we succeed in mastering the new medium it will enrich us. But it can also put our mind to sleep. We must not forget that in the past the inability to transport immediate experience and to convey it to others made the use of language necessary and thus compelled the human mind to develop concepts. For in order to describe things one must draw the general from the specific; one must select, compare, think. When communication can be achieved by pointing with the finger, however, the mouth grows silent, the writing hand stops, and the mind shrinks.

  Rudolf Arnheim

  Communication, Sleep, Writing

  Rudolf Arnheim (1957). “Film as Art”, p.195, Univ of California Press

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• The operations of the human mind are also controlled by words of power, formulas that become a focus of mental activity.

  Northrop Frye

  Focus, Mind, Operations

  Northrop Frye, Alvin A. Lee (2006). “The Great Code: The Bible and Literature”, p.25, University of Toronto Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Metaphors of unity and integration take us only so far, because they are derived from the finiteness of the human mind.

  Northrop Frye

  Unity, Mind, Metaphor

  Northrop Frye, Alvin A. Lee (2006). “The Great Code: The Bible and Literature”, p.189, University of Toronto Press

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The rebel is committed to giving a form and pattern to the world. It is a pattern born of the indomitable thrust of the human mind, the mind which makes out of the mass of meaningless data in the world an order and a form.

  Rollo May

  Data, Order, Giving

  Rollo May (1998). “Power and Innocence: A Search for the Sources of Violence”, p.237, W. W. Norton & Company

  4 Copy quote

  Show source