Mind

Ah, snug lie those that slumber
Beneath Conviction's roof.
Their floors are sturdy lumber,
Their windows weatherproof.
But I sleep cold forever
And cold sleep all my kind,
For I was born to shiver
In the draft from an open mind. ~~ Phyllis McGinley

There are many who lust for the simple answers of doctrine or decree. They are on the left and right. They are not confined to a single part of society. They are the terrorists of the mind. ~~ A. Bartlett Giamatti

Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of the mind is irreparable. ~~ Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Every man has seen the wall that limits his mind. ~~ Alfred de Vigny

The true, strong, and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small. ~~ Samuel Johnson

America shudders at anything alien, and when it wants to shut its mind against any man's ideas, it calls him a foreigner. ~~ Max Lerner

There is one thing that matters -- to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people. ~~ Logan Pearsall Smith

The mind is not sex-typed. ~~ Margaret Mead

To be capable of steady friendship or lasting love, are the two greatest proofs, not only of goodness of heart, but of strength of mind. ~~ William Hazlitt

Doubt is not a pleasant state of mind, but certainty is absurd. ~~ Voltaire (see Said Who)

You have to allow a certain amount of time in which you are doing nothing in order to have things occur to you, to let your mind think. ~~ Mortimer Adler

Intellectual liberty is the air of the soul, the sunshine of the mind, and without it, the world is a prison, the universe a dungeon. ~~ Robert G. Ingersoll

A nation that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan. ~~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Let me advise thee not to talk of thyself as being old. There is something in Mind Cure, after all, and if thee continually talks of thyself as being old, thee may perhaps bring on some of the infirmities of age. ~~ Hannah Whitall Smith

Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip. ~~ Barbara Tuchman

No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor. ~~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

He would come in and say he changed his mind -- which was a gilded figure of speech, because he didn't have any. ~~ Mark Twain

The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing -- to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts. ~~ John Keats

Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public. ~~ Adlai E. Stevenson

I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it. ~~ Harry Emerson Fosdick

The only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar minds -- success. ~~ Edmund Burke

Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction; for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it. ~~ G. K. Chesterton

Stay away from trouble. Presence of mind is good, but absence of body is better. ~~ Unattributed

Active minds that think and study,

Like swift brooks are seldom muddy. ~~ Arthur Guiterman

The mind is like a TV set: when it goes blank, it's a good idea to turn off the sound. ~~ Unattributed

I have never seen a more lucid, better balanced, mad mind than mine. ~~ Vladimir Nabokov

The eye does not control the mind. The mind controls the eye. ~~ R. A. J. Walling

A man running for office puts me in mind of a dog that's lost--he smells everybody he meets, and wags himself all over. ~~ Josh Billings

The waist is a terrible thing to mind. ~~ Ziggy [Tom Wilson]

What a waste it is to lose one's mind, or not to have a mind ... How true that is. ~~ Dan Quayle

A great many open minds should be closed for repairs. ~~ Toledo Blade

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young. ~~ Henry Ford

If men could regard the events of their own lives with more open minds, they would frequently discover that they did not really desire the things they failed to obtain. ~~ Andre Maurois

More important than learning how to recall things is finding ways to forget things that are cluttering the mind. ~~ Eric Butterworth

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away. ~~ Ronald Reagan

A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face... one of the few havens remaining where a man's mind can get both provocation and privacy. ~~ Edward P. Morgan

Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one. ~~ Malcolm S. Forbes

They tell me I have got a mind of my own, but sometimes it's like my mind itself has its own mind. ~~ Edith Ann [Lily Tomlin]

If it takes a lot of words to say what you have in mind, give it more thought. ~~ Dennis Roth

Anger is a wind which blows out the lamp of the mind. ~~ Robert G. Ingersoll

After 30, a body has a mind of its own. ~~ Bette Midler

When it comes to staying young, a mind lift beats a face lift any day. ~~ Marty Bucella

Your mind must always go, even while you're shaking hands and going through all the maneuvers. I developed the ability long ago to do one thing while thinking about another. ~~ Richard Milhous Nixon

When even one American -- who has done nothing wrong -- is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth -- then all Americans are in peril. ~~ Harry S Truman

I once read that the only way to enjoy life is to observe everything with a sense of detached amusement. I don't always do that, but it serves you well to keep it in mind. ~~ Bryant Gumbel

If you would stand well with a great mind, leave him with a favorable impression of yourself; if with a little mind, leave him with a favorable impression of himself. ~~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Have you not learned that not stocks or bonds or stately homes or products of mill or field are our country? It is the splendid thought that is in our minds. ~~ Benjamin Harrison

The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind. ~~ William Blake

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up. ~~ Mark Twain

The mind is a strange machine which can combine the materials offered to it in the most astonishing ways. ~~ Bertrand Russell

The human mind always makes progress, but it is a progress in spirals. ~~ Germaine De Stael

Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier. ~~ Charles F. Kettering

Our minds are lazier than our bodies. ~~ La Rochefoucauld

The mind is like the stomach. It is not how much you put into it that counts, but how much it digests. ~~ A. J. Nock

The mind is a wonderful thing. It starts working the minute you're born, and doesn't stop until you get up to speak in public. ~~ Joe Moore

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. ~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

To serve is beautiful, but only if it is done with joy and a whole heart and a free mind. ~~ Pearl S. Buck

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

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind. ~~ Gilbert Seldes

My own mind is my own church. ~~ Thomas Paine

The need to be right -- the sign of a vulgar mind. ~~ Albert Camus

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds. ~~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Little things affect little minds. ~~ Benjamin Disraeli

Some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage and working their solitary but irresistible way throughout a thousand obstacles. ~~ Washington Irving

You often get a better hold upon a problem by going away from it for a time and dismissing it from your mind altogether. ~~ Dr. Frank Crane

When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. ~~ Samuel Johnson

Chance favors the prepared mind. ~~ Louis Pasteur

I have not lost my mind -- it's backed up on disk somewhere. ~~ Unattributed

An improper mind is a perpetual feast. ~~ Logan Pearsall Smith

What the country needs is dirtier fingernails and cleaner minds. ~~ Will Rogers

At a certain age some people's minds close up; they live on their intellectual fat. ~~ William Lyons Phelps

I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind ... as in America. ~~ Alexis de Tocqueville

Only a weak mind seeks ultimate answers. ~~ Agnes Thornton

Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained. ~~ Arthur Somers Roche

The greatest discovery of my generation is that man can alter his life simply by altering his attitude of mind. ~~ William James

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds. ~~ Remy de Gourmont

He was so narrow-minded he could see through a keyhole with two eyes. ~~ Esther Forbes

If a pig could give his mind to anything, he would not be a pig. ~~ Charles Dickens

When a man makes up his mind to become a rascal, he should examine himself closely and see if he isn't better constructed for a fool. ~~ Josh Billings

When I look back now over my life and call to mind what I might have had simply for taking and did not take, my heart is like to break. ~~ William Hale White

It is discouraging to try to penetrate a mind like yours. You ought to get it out and dance on it. That would take some of the rigidity out of it. ~~ Mark Twain

There is no remedy so easy as books, which if they do not give cheerfulness, at least restore quiet to the most troubled mind. ~~ Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

The man we call a specialist today was formerly called a man with a one-track mind. ~~ Endre Balogh

Volumes are now being written and spoken about the effect of the mind on the body -- I wish more was thought of the effect of the body on the mind. ~~ Florence Nightingale

Some people think they have an open mind when it is really their mouth. ~~ Unattributed

Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. ~~ Thomas Jefferson

But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American War? The revolution was effected before the war commenced. The revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people. ~~ John Adams

A new question has arisen in modern man's mind, the question, namely, whether life is worth living...No sensible answer can be given to the question...because the question does not make any sense. ~~ Erich Fromm

Love and respect woman. Look to her not only for comfort, but for strength and inspiration and the doubling of your intellectual and moral powers. Blot out from your mind any idea of superiority; you have none. ~~ Joseph Mazzini

Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind. ~~ John Milton

The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues. ~~ Rene Descartes

The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of Hell, a hell of heaven. ~~ John Milton

If you keep your mind sufficiently open, people will throw a lot of rubbish into it. ~~ William A. Orton

When you make a mistake, don't look back at it long. Take the reason of the thing into your mind, and then look forward. Mistakes are lessons of wisdom. The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power. ~~ Hugh White

Every man ... should periodically be compelled to listen to opinions which are infuriating to him. To hear nothing but what is pleasing to one is to make a pillow of the mind. ~~ St. John Ervine

Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with a part of another; people are friends in spots. ~~ George Santayana

The mortal sickness of a mind too unhappy to be kind. ~~ A. E. Housman

The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds. ~~ Will Durant

When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind. ~~ Cicero

If decade after decade the truth cannot be told, each person's mind begins to roam irretrievably. One's fellow countrymen become harder to understand than Martians. ~~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. ~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me. ~~ W. H. Auden

Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind. ~~ William Somerset Maugham

Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them. ~~ David Hume

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. ~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

No mind should submit their mind to another mind: He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still -- that's my motto. I won't be brainwashed. ~~ M. Spark

It is better to be high-spirited even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent. ~~ Vincent van Gogh

An intellectual is a person whose mind watches itself. ~~ Albert Camus

Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid. ~~ Gilbert. K. Chesterton

When a man you like switches from what he said a year ago, or 4 years ago, he is a broad-minded person who has courage enough to change his mind with changing conditions. When a man you don't like does it, he is a liar who has broken his promises. ~~ Franklin P. Adams

Many a man that couldn't direct you to the drug store on the corner when he was 30 will get a respectful hearing when age has further impaired his mind. ~~ Finley Peter Dunne

The man who listens to Reason is lost; reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her. ~~ George Bernard Shaw

Uncultivated minds are not full of wild flowers, like uncultivated fields. Villainous weeds grow in them, and they are full of toads. ~~ Logan Pearsall Smith

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously. ~~ Henry Kissinger

Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming. ~~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Many a man thinks he has an open mind, when it's merely vacant. ~~ Henny Youngman

Inside the polling booth every American and woman stands as the equal of every other American man and woman. There they have no superiors. There they have no masters save their own minds and consciences. ~~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. ~~ George Orwell

It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious. ~~ Alfred North Whitehead

It is our will
That thus enchaines us to permitted ill --
We might be otherwise -- we might be all
We dream of happy, high majestical.

Where is the love, beauty and truth we seek,

But in our mind? ~~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us. The free mind is no barking dog to be tethered on a 10-foot chain. ~~ Adlai E. Stevenson

The conformation of his mind was such that whatever was little seemed to him great, and whatever was great seemed to him little. ~~ Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay

Most people have minds like concrete: mixed up or permanently set. ~~ Unattributed

Take a note of that; his Lordship says he will turn it over in what he is pleased to call his mind. ~~ Richard Bethell, Lord Westbury

A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance. Observe how the greatest minds yield in some degree to the superstitions of their age. ~~ Thoreau

If you think that you can think about a thing, inextricably attached to something else, without thinking of the thing it is attached to, then you have a legal mind. ~~ Thomas Reed Powell

Nothing worth knowing can be understood with the mind. ~~ Woody Allen

Minds are like parachutes. They only function when they are open. ~~ Sir James Dewar

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. ~~ William James

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. ~~ Sir Winston Spencer Churchill

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. ~~ Howard Phillips Lovecraft

I told you he had a cash register mind. Rings every time he opens his mouth. ~~ Dennis O'Keefe

Have a variety of interests ... These interests relax the mind and lessen tension on the nervous system. People with many interests live, not only longest, but happiest. ~~ George Matthew Allen

Values are tapes we play on the Walkman of the mind: any tune we choose so long as it does not disturb others. ~~ Jonathan Sacks

Nothing is more unpleasant that a virtuous person with a mean mind. ~~ Walter Bagehot

A style does not go out of style as long as it adapts itself to its period. When there is an incompatibility between the style and a certain state of mind, it is never the style that triumphs. ~~ Coco Chanel

The superior man ... does not set his mind either for anything, or against anything; what is right he will follow. ~~ Confucius

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination. ~~ Harry S Truman

Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses it purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind. ~~ Leonardo da Vinci

I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation. ~~ W. Somerset Maugham

Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed. ~~ Constitution of UNESCO

Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind. ~~ Wolcott Gibbs

Do not ... hope wholly to reason away your troubles; do not feed them with attention, and they will die imperceptibly away. Fix your thoughts upon your business, fill your intervals with company, and sunshine will again break in upon your mind. ~~ Samuel Johnson

If there is anything more dangerous to the life of the mind than having no independent commitment to ideas, it is having an excess of commitment to some special and constricting idea. ~~ Richard Hofstadter

Never let people see the bottom of your purse or of your mind. ~~ Italian proverb

I call that mind free which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, [and] receives new truth as an angel from Heaven. ~~ William Ellery Channing

It is very important to make sure the person you're marrying is like minded. It's crucial for a couple to have shared goals and values. The more you have in common the less you have to argue about. ~~ Barbara Friedman