Kathy Acker Quotes

How weak our mind is; how quickly it is terrified and unbalanced as soon as we are confronted with a small, incomprehensible fact. Instead of dismissing the problem with: "We do not understand because we cannot find the cause," we immediately imagine terrible mysteries and supernatural powers.

If "ifs" and "ands" were pots and pans, there'd be no work for tinkers' hands

Our mind is like a field, and performing actions is like sowing seeds in that field.

Faith is a permanent and vital endowment of the human mind-a part of reason itself. The insane alone are without it.

God, I felt certain, did not mind that I didn’t press my hands together to pray. I was casual, but I was sincere. I knew that God existed as the Correct Answer inside my chest.

Your body can be very female, which is something you can do nothing about, but then you can have the soul, the mind and the spirit of both male and female. The women friends I am closest to somehow have this masculine side to them, they shove their hands in their pockets when they walk: I love that side.

I will confess that I have no more sense of what goes on in the mind of mankind than I have for the mind of an ant.

Narrowness of mind is often the cause of obstinacy; we do not easily believe beyond what we see.

Free will is to mind what chance is to matter.

Mind is the creator of everything.

Everything else you see and experience in this world is effect, and that includes your feelings. The cause is always your thoughts.

Require nothing unreasonable of your officers and men, but see that whatever is required be punctually complied with. Reward and punish every man according to his merit, without partiality or prejudice; hear his complaints; if well founded, redress them; if otherwise, discourage them, in order to prevent frivolous ones. Discourage vice in every shape, and impress upon the mind of every man, from the first to the lowest, the importance of the cause, and what it is they are contending for.

As the language of the face is universal, so 'tis very comprehensive; no laconism can reach it: 'Tis the short hand of the mind, and crowds a great deal in a little room

The human mind shows an urge to capture into fixed forms through unreal assumptions, that is, fictions, that which is chaotic, always in flux, and incomprehensible. Serving this urge, the child quite generally uses a scheme in order to act and to find his way. We proceed much the same when we divide the earth by meridians and parallels, for only thus do we obtain fixed points which we can bring into a relationship with one another.

I bully myself cause I make me do what I put my mind to.

When things are in order, if the cause of the orderliness cannot be deduced from the motion of the elements or from the composition of matter, it is quite possibly a cause possessing a mind.

We think about sex obsessively except during the act, when our minds tend to wander.

In the mind there is no absolute or free will; but the mind is determined to wish this or that by a cause, which has also been determined by another cause, and this last by another cause, and so on to infinity.

Where will you go to seek Brahman? He is immanent in all beings. Here, here is the visible Brahman! Shame on those who, neglecting the visible Brahman, set their minds on other things! Here is the visible Brahman before you as tangible as a fruit in one's hand! Can't you see? Here - here - is Brahman!

Stupidity would not be absolute stupidity did it not fear intelligence.

It’s not that Etienne dislikes Tybalt. Etienne just dislikes chaos, and Tybalt causes almost as much commotion as I do. Sometimes more, when he really sets his mind to it, although my chaos is a little more destructive, if I do say so myself.

INTENTION, n. The mind's sense of the prevalence of one set of influences over another set; an effect whose cause is the imminence, immediate or remote, of the performance of an involuntary act.

You can ask the question, "What's making the boat go forward?" It can't be the wake. The wake can't drive the boat. It's just the trail left behind. It can't make the boat go forward, any more than the trail that you've left behind in your life is responsible for where you're going now in your life. The belief that whatever you've been is what you have to be is a meme - a mind virus.

If decade after decade the truth cannot be told, each person's mind begins to roam irretrievably. One's fellow countrymen become harder to understand than Martians.

I'd so much rather have exciting architecture that causes one to stop, breathe, and reflect on the potential of the human mind, the craft, and exploring things.