Quotes About Mind

Free will is an illusion. Our wills are simply not of our own making.

a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.

None of these adventitious mental states are the real you. You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm.

This is not to say that external circumstances do not matter. But it is your mind, rather than circumstances themselves, that determines the quality of your life. Your mind is the basis of everything you experience

You are not in control of your mind—because you, as a conscious agent, are only part of your mind, living at the mercy of other parts.

But it is your mind, rather than circumstances themselves, that determines the quality of your life.

Our sense of our own freedom results from our not paying attention to what it is actually like to be what we are. The moment we do pay attention, we begin to see that free will is nowhere to be found, and our subjectivity is perfectly compatible with this truth. Thoughts and actions simply arise in the mind. What else could they do? The truth about us is stranger than many suppose: The illusion of free will is itself an illusion.

Your mind is the basis of everything you experience and of every contribution you make to the lives of others. Given this fact, it makes sense to train it.

it seems to me that, on balance, soul/body dualism has been the enemy of compassion. For instance, the moral stigma that still surrounds disorders of mood and cognition seems largely the result of viewing the mind as distinct from the brain. When the pancreas fails to produce insulin, there is no shame in taking synthetic insulin to compensate for its lost function.

Although the insights we can have in meditation tell us nothing about the origins of the universe, they do confirm some well-established truths about the human mind: Our conventional sense of self is an illusion; positive emotions, such as compassion and patience, are teachable skills; and the way we think directly influences our experience of the world.

Consciousness is the one thing in this universe that cannot be an illusion

We cannot live by reason alone.

What we call reality is just when we all agree about our hallucinations.

But the reality of consciousness appears irreducible. Only consciousness can know itself—and directly, through first-person experience.

Consciousness is the one thing in the universe that cannot be an illusion--even if I'm a brain in a vat, all my memories are false, and my perceptions are of a world that doesn't exist, I'm still having an experience.

Free will is an illusion. Our wills are simply not of our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we have exert no conscious control. We do not have the freedom we think we have.

Chalmers: It's awfully hard to define consciousness. But I'd start by saying that it's the subjective experience of the mind and the world. It's basically what it feels like, from the first-person point of view, to be thinking and perceiving and judging.

There's something it's like for me to see the green leaves outside my window right now, so that's a conscious state to me. But there may be some unconscious language-processing going on in my head that doesn't feel like anything to me, or some motor processes in the cerebellum. Those might be states of me, but they're not conscious states of me, because there's nothing it's like for me to undergo those states.

Choosing beliefs freely is not what rational minds do.

Despite our attachment to notions of free will, most us know that disorders of the brain can trump the best intentions of the mind.

The intention to do one thing and not another does not originate in consciousness -- rather, it appears in consciousness, as does any thought or impulse that might oppose it.

Our wills are simply not of our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control. We do not have the freedom we think we have.

Am I free to change my mind? Of course not. It can only change me.

I cannot decide what I will next think or intend until a thought or intention arises. What will my next mental state be? I do not know—it just happens. Where is the freedom in that?