Quotes about mind

You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.

Until death, all defeat is psychological.

If you can't change a situation, change your perception of it. Remember, most of your stress comes from the way you respond, not the way life is.

Nothing kills you faster than your own mind. Don't stress over things that are out of your control.

Men are disturbed not by things, but by their opinions about them.

Knowing others is wisdom; knowing yourself is enlightenment.

He who knows does not speak; he who speaks does not know.

Remember that all is opinion.

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.

Against that positivism which stops before phenomena, saying "there are only facts," I should say: no, it is precisely facts that do not exist, only interpretations.

Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe we do not believe, and cannot disengage ourselves from what we condemn.

All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.

Running away from fear is fear; fighting pain is pain; trying to be brave is being scared.

A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So he loses touch with reality, and lives in a world of illusion.

Most of the time you are thinking about life, not living life.

What a liberation to realize that the “voice in my head” is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that.

Using no way as way; having no limitation as limitation.

All types of knowledge ultimately mean self knowledge.

Don't think, feel. It is like a finger pointing a way to the moon. Don't concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory.

As rain breaks through an ill-thatched house, passion will break through an unreflecting mind.

Wisdom is born of meditation; without meditation wisdom is lost.

To cease from evil, to do good, and to purify the mind — this is the teaching of all the Buddhas.

Whatever an enemy might do to an enemy, or a foe to a foe, the ill-directed mind can do to you even worse. Whatever a mother or father might do for you, the well-directed mind can do for you even better.

The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.

He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

Remember that it is not he who gives abuse or blows who affronts, but the view we take of these things as insulting.

Only the educated are free.

To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day.

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment intuition.

He whose intellect overcomes his desire is higher than the angels; he whose desire overcomes his intellect is less than an animal.

Fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true virtue.

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.

All men by nature desire to know.

Any one can get angry — that is easy — but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for every one, nor is it easy.

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead.

I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

The greatest danger, that of losing one’s own self, may pass off as quietly as if it were nothing.

We can be deceived by believing what is untrue, but we certainly are also deceived by not believing what is true.

To be, or not to be, that is the question.

I think, therefore I am.

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.

A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.

Everything you can imagine is real.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.

Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if you will ever dig.

Nowhere can a man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.

It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.

There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.

The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.

A negative mind will never give you a positive life.

Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.

Tell all the truth but tell it slant.

Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.

Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer.

Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.

Emotions are not just the fuel that powers the psychological mechanism of a reasoning creature, they are parts, highly complex and messy parts, of this creature’s reasoning itself.

Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.

Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

Good sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world.

It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.

Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.

Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

All our dignity consists in thought.

When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that, in the modern world, the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

Nature loves to hide.