Quotes About Mind

This was the human mind made real, overshadowing even the birds in its longing to be free. Are we the only animals that must escape ourselves? Because, seeing that balloon, I could imagine my own soul, trapped in the dusty acreage of my old body, burning with a flame like this and lifting away from me, just as silvered, just as new.

It's easy to say something is all in your head. It's like saying a sunset is all in your eyes, she said, gesturing, pursing her mouth in small furies. It's stupid, it's nonsense. It has no brain for beauty.

The brain is so wrong, all the time she says, turning to the dark landscape again. Wrong about what time it is, and who people are, and where home is: wrong wrong wrong. The lying brain.

It's easy to say something is all in your head. It's like saying a sunset is all in your eyes," she said, gesturing, pursing her mouth in small furies. "It's stupid, it's nonsense. It has no brain for beauty.

The brain is so wrong, all the time. [...] Wrong about what time it is, and who people are, and where home is: wrong wrong wrong. The lying brain.

Depression frequently destroys the power of mind over mood.

The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality and my life, as I write this, is vital even when sad. I may wake up sometime next year without my mind again; it is not likely to stick around all the time. Meanwhile, however, I have discovered what I would have to call a soul, a part of myself I could never have imagined until one day, seven years ago, when hell came to pay me a surprise visit. It's a precious discovery.

Books are not luxuries. They are the meat and drink for the mind.

I dream a lot. I do more painting when I'm not painting. It's in the subconscious.

Perception is controlled hallucination.

Space is all one space and thought is all one thought, but my mind divides its spaces into spaces into spaces and thoughts into thoughts into thoughts. Like a large condominium. Occasionally I think about the one Space and the one Thought, but usually I don't. Usually I think about my condominium.

what makes a person spend time being sad when they could be happy? [...] a person can cry or laugh. always when you're crying you could be laughing, you have the choice. crazy people know how to do this best because their minds are loose. so you can take the flexibility your mind is capable of and make it work for you. you decide what you want to do and how you want to spend your time. remember, though, that I think i'm missing some chemicals.

Every night there is something to ruminate on. The vagrant mind knows no boundaries. It leaps

My memory is good for some things and not others.

Why was it that her temper and her thinking never happened at the same time? Her temper behaved like a glutton sitting in an expensive restaurant ordering a hundred dishes, only to disappear when the bill came due. It left her lucid mind to do dishes.

Like why Lena always thought of Ritz crackers when she shaved her legs. Who knew why? And did it even matter?

There was a burst of enthusiasm for recycling every so often, but it usually didn't extend to the heart or the mind. It was limited to tires or bottles... What if people knew they were recycled? Would that change anything?

Your mind is the basis of everything you experience and of every contribution you make to the lives of others.

I am arguing that science can, in principle, help us understand what we would do and should want - and, therefore, what other people should do and should want in order to live the best lives possible. My claim is that there are right and wrong answers to moral questions, just as there are right and wrong answers to questions of physics, and such answers may on day fall within reach of the maturing sciences of mind.

is one thing to say that you are unaware of a vast amount of activity in your brain. It is quite another to say that some of this activity is aware of itself and is watching your every move.

Nothing about a brain, when surveyed as a physical system, suggests that it is a locus of experience. Were we not already brimming with consciousness ourselves, we would find no evidence for it in the universe—nor would we have any notion of the many experiential states that it gives rise to. The only proof that it is like something to be you at this moment is the fact (obvious only to you) that it is like something to be you.10

Being wisely selfish and being selfless can amount to very much the same thing. There are centuries of anecdotal testimony on this point—and, as we will see, the scientific study of the mind has begun to bear it out. There is now little question that how one uses one's attention, moment to moment, largely determines what kind of person one becomes. Our minds—and lives—are largely shaped by how we use them.

Consciousness is already free of everything that remotely resembles a self.

In subjective terms, you are consciousness itself—you are not the next, evanescent image or string of words that appears in your mind. Not seeing it arise, however, the next thought will seem to become what you are.