Archive

Quotes

A mind lively and at ease can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.

—Jane Austen, 1815

Understanding is a very dull occupation.

—Gertrude Stein, 1937

Any man could, if he were so inclined, be the sculptor of his own brain.

—Santiago Ramón y Cajal, 1897

Strength of mind is exercise, not rest.

—Alexander Pope, 1733

Sooner or later if the activity of the mind is restricted anywhere, it will cease to function even where it is allowed to be free.

—Edith Hamilton, 1930

The brain is an unreliable organ, it is monstrously great, monstrously developed. Swollen, like a goiter.

—Aleksandr Blok, c. 1920

Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be breakthrough.

—R.D. Laing, 1967

The human mind is an evolutionary product, just like the human body.

—Tetsuro Matsuzawa, 2010

There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. As well speak of a female liver.

—Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1898

Imagination is the secret and marrow of civilization. It is the very eye of faith.

—Henry Ward Beecher, 1887

As is the face, so is the mind.

—Roman proverb

The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.

—Charles Darwin, 1871

“I think, therefore I am” is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches.

—Milan Kundera, 1990