Here are some facts, insights, and truths about the mind, its processes, and its power I have gathered from different resources. Like me, you might not even hear some of them until now. Enjoy!
Mind Trivias
- Most of us use less than only 10% of our brain potential although we have access to the rest. We use more than 10% when we have a moment of creativity and inspiration.
- The concept of a light bulb next to a person who have suddenly thought of an idea (in comic books, cartoons, or movies) came from Scientist Manuel Schoch’s research and observation – that when the brain is in a state of tranquility & observation, the brain lights up and we can access more information.
- Our mind is inherently complex and likes to complicate things. Whereas, much in life is simple or has a simple (obvious) solution. We often miss what’s on our nose!
- Left and Right Brain Relationship:
- Left Brain – logical, male, west, scientific, grasping, conceptualizing, analytical
- Right Brain – emotional, female, east, intuitive, spatial, creative, artistic, receptive
- We have approximately 50,000 – 60,000 thoughts per day. Unfortunately, 95% of those thoughts we had today are the same ones we had yesterday! That would make only 5% of thoughts we think are new each day.
- Are you thinking about what you’re thinking about? Read that sentence again and read it carefully. It’s not a play on words.
- People can typically remember about 7 (±2) items in a random list.
- The mind is an iceberg; it floats with only 17 percent of its bulk above water – Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939)
Mind Insights
My life and work has been aimed at one goal only: to infer or guess how the mental apparatus is constructed and what forces interplay and counteract in it.
Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939)
Austrian psychoanalyst
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955)
German-born U.S. physicist
Out of My Later Years
If an idea’s worth having once, it’s worth having twice.
Tom Stoppard (1937 - )
Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter
Indian Ink
I took my mind a walk or my mind took me a walk – whichever was the truth of it.
Norman McCaig (1910 – 1996)
Scottish poet
“An Ordinary Day”
Mental reflection is so much more interesting than T.V. It’s a shame more people don’t switch over to it. They probably think that what they hear is unimportant but it never is.
Robert T. Pirsig (1928 - )
U.S. writer
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
In everything that is supposed to be scientific, Reason must be awake and reflection applied. To him who looks at the world rationally the world looks rationally back. The relation is mutual.
G. W. F. Hegel (1770 – 1831)
German philosopher
Reason in History
To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.
Jules Henri Poincaré (1854 – 1912)
French mathematician and scientist
La Science et l’Hypothèse
To take time to think is to gain time to live.
Nancy Kline
U.S. author
Time to Think
As followers of natural science we know nothing of any relation between thoughts and the brain, except as a gross correlation in time and space.
Charles Scott Sherrington (1857 – 1952)
British physiologist
Man on his Nature
He never is alone that is accompanied with noble thoughts.
John Fletcher (1579 – 1625)
English playwright
“Love’s Cure”
If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you: but if you really make them think, they’ll hate you.
Don Marquis (1878 – 1937)
U.S. journalist and writer
“archy and mehitabel”
Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.
Confucius (551 BC – 479 BC)
Chinese philosopher, administrator, and moralist
Analects
Mind is the great lever of all things; human thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately answered.
Daniel Webster (1782 – 1852)
U.S. lawyer, politician, and orator, 1825
Address on laying the cornerstone of the Bunker Hill Monument
My thought is me: that is why I can’t stop. I exist by what I think…and I can’t prevent myself from thinking.
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 – 1980)
French philosopher, playwright, and novelist
Nausea
The Master said, “If one learns from others but does not think, one will be bewildered. If, on the other hand, one thinks but does not learn from others, one will be in peril.”
Confucius (551 BC – 479 BC)
Chinese philosopher, administrator, and moralist
The stream of our thought is like a river. On the whole easy simple flowing predominates…But at intervals, an obstruction, a set-back, a log-jam occurs, stops the current, creates an eddy, and makes things move the other way.
William James (1842 – 1910)
U.S. psychologist and philosopher
The Principles of Psychology
The supreme paradox of all thought is the attempt to discover something that thought cannot think.
Søren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855)
Danish philosopher
Philosophical Fragments
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)
English poet and playwright
Hamlet Act 2, Scene 2
We do not live to think, but, on the contrary, we think in order that we may succeed in surviving.
José Ortega y Gasset (1883 – 1955)
Spanish writer and philosopher
Partisan Review, “In Search of Goethe from Within”
We must learn to explore all the options and possibilities that confront us in a complex and rapidly changing world…We must dare to think about “unthinkable things” because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless.
J. William Fulbright (1905 – 1995)
U.S. educator and politician
Speech to Senate
I’m fat, but I’m thin inside. Has it ever struck you that there’s a thin man inside every fat man, just as they say there’s a statue inside every block of stone?
George Orwell (1903 – 1950)
British writer
Coming Up for Air
Everything has been said, and we are more than seven thousand years of human thought too late.
Jean de La Bruyère (1645 – 1696)
French essayist and moralist
Characters or the Manners of the Age
If man thinks about his physical or moral state, he usually discovers that he is ill.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832)
German poet, playwright, and scientist
Sprüche in Prosa (Rudolf Steiner (ed.))
Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do.
Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970)
British philosopher and mathematician
To know how to say what others only know how to think is what makes men poets or sages; and to dare to say what others only dare to think makes men martyrs or reformers – or both.
Elizabeth Charles (1828 – 1896)
British writer
Chronicle of the Schönberg-Cotta Family
The great consolation in life is to say what one thinks.
Voltaire (1694 – 1778)
French writer and philosopher
The brain is the means by which we think we think.
Julian Tuwim (1894 – 1953)
Polish poet
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
H. P. Lovecraft (1890 – 1937)
U.S. writer
The Call of Cthulhu
No man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes. He sees it edited by a definite set of customs and institutions and ways of thinking.
Ruth Benedict (1887 – 1948)
U.S. anthropologist
Patterns of Culture
A man’s life is what his thoughts make it.
Marcus Aurelius (121 – 180)
Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher
Literature
If you think you are beaten, you are
If you think you dare not, you don’t
If you’d like to win, but think you can’t
it’s almost certain you won’t
If you think you’ll lose, you’ve lost
For out of the world we find
Success begins with a fellows will -
It’s all a state of mind.
If you think you’re outclassed, you are
You’ve got to think high to rise
You’ve got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win a prize.
Life’s battle don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man
But sooner or later the man who wins
Is the one who thinks he can.
Anonymous
oooOOOooo
When faced with ill-natured people, we should think about the fact that in the past they failed to see the harmfulness of the disturbing emotions which now overwhelm them.
They became accustomed to giving them full reign and this familiarity has carried over into their present life. Nor can they have created much positive energy. All of this accounts for their unpleasant conduct.
If we are constantly surrounded by nice people who treat us well and by those that are in good health, we will lack the opportunity to increase our compassion.
Therefore, when such a rare opportunity presents itself, we recognize its value and cherish it. In this way we use adverse circumstances to support our spiritual practice, which is a central theme of the instructions for training the mind.
People who are difficult to deal with offer us a precious chance to train ourselves to be loving, compassionate and altruistic…That is why they are like a precious treasure.
When I see ill-natured people,
Overwhelmed by wrongdoing and pain,
May I cherish them as something rare,
As though I had found a treasure trove?
From “Eight Verses for Training the mind”
by Geshe Rinchen
oooOOOooo
I have finally kum to the konklusion, that a good reliable sett ov bowels iz wurth more tu a man, than enny quantity ov brains.
Henry Wheeler Shaw (1818 – 1885)
U.S. humorist.
Josh Billings: Hiz Sayings
oooOOOooo
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deson’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm.
Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Amazing, huh?
oooOOOooo
Mind Facts, Insights, and Truths
No comments:
Post a Comment