Quotes About Mind

So many things constrain us, from so many directions. The most altruistic and sustainable philosophies fail before the brute brain-stem imperative of self-interest. Subtle and elegant equations predict the behavior of the quantum world, but none can explain it. After four thousand years we can't even prove that reality exists beyond the mind of the first-person dreamer. We have such need of intellects greater than our own.

If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't." —Emerson M. Pugh

What's the difference between being dead, and just not knowing you're alive?

We're not thinking machines, we're—we're feeling machines that happen to think.

Mind out of the gutter, Suze. Eros is only one kind of love, eh? Ancient Greeks recognised four.

THE INTUITIVE MIND IS A SACRED GIFT AND THE RATIONAL MIND IS A FAITHFUL SERVANT. WE HAVE CREATED A SOCIETY THAT HONORS THE SERVANT AND HAS FORGOTTEN THE GIFT. —ALBERT EINSTEIN (APOCRYPHAL)

People aren't rational. You aren't rational. We're not thinking machines, we're—we're feeling machines that happen to think.

It turns out the unconscious mind is better at making complex decisions than is the conscious mind114. The conscious mind just can't handle as many variables, apparently. Quoth one of the researchers: "At some point in our evolution, we started to make decisions consciously, and we're not very good at it."115

Long before art and science and philosophy arose, consciousness had but one function: not to merely implement motor commands, but to mediate between commands in opposition.

Floaters swarmed through his eyeballs like schools of panicked fish.

If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't.

We're the goddamned Kalashnikovs of thinking meat.

REALITY IS THAT WHICH, WHEN YOU STOP BELIEVING IN IT, DOESN'T GO AWAY. —PHILIP K. DICK

consciousness had but one function: not to merely implement motor commands, but to mediate between commands in opposition.

People aren't rational. We're not thinking machines, we're - we're feeling machines that happen to think.

Every concert pianist knows that the surest way to ruin a performance is to be aware of what the fingers are doing. Every dancer and acrobat knows enough to let the mind go, let the body run itself. Every driver of a manual vehicle arrives at destinations with no recollection of the stops and turns and roads traveled in getting there. You are all sleepwalkers, whether climbing creative peaks or slogging through some mundane routine for the thousandth time. You are all sleepwalkers.

What's the difference between being dead, and just not knowing you're alive?

Agnostic philosopher Antony O'Hear agrees: 'there are aspects of our experience and existence more fundamental than science, and on which science depends for its possibility. So science cannot be used, as it often is, to undermine those features of our natures.'35 The idea that the mind is 'nothing but' the brain is ultimately a deduction from the assumption of naturalism.

Neither exhortations to virtue nor the argument of approaching death should divert us from literature; for in a good mind it excites the love of virtue, and dissipates, or at least diminishes, the fear of death.

Zekan?n en sivri noktas? ?üphe ve tereddüttür.

Rüyalar?m?z, bir delinin uyan?k ?uurundaki abuk sabuk hayallerin tecellisinden ba?ka nedir? Hepimiz günün bir k?sm?nda, yani uyurken deliriyoruz ve belki de akl?n çemberinden, s?k?nt?s?ndan kurtulan ruhumuz böylelikle dinleniyor. Biz rüyalar?m?zda ç?ld?r?yoruz, deliler uyan?kken rüya görüyorlar.

Korkunun bu en derinle?en türü dayan?lacak ?ey de?il; ?st?rab?n vukuundan evvel ruhta bir gölgesinden ibaret olan korku, ?st?raptan bin kat daha müthi?. Hayal gücünün ?????na yakla?t?kça ruhta uzanan, büyüyen ve asl?ndan daha korkunç bir gölge.

The intelligence of few perceives what has been carefully hidden in the recesses of the mind.

The mind ought sometimes to be diverted, that it may return the better to thinking.