Santiago Ramon y Cajal Quotes

Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food to the body.

Each of us has been put on earth with the ability to do something well. We cheat ourselves and the world if we don't use that ability as best we can.

Whatever the difference between brilliant and average brains, we are all creative. And through practice and study we can enhance our skills and talents.

The word liberal distinguishes whatever nourishes the mind and spirit from the training which is merely practical or professional or from the trivialities which are no training at all.

Education comes from within; you get it by struggle and effort and thought.

Small people delight in what they call consistency-that is, it gives them immense pleasure to say that they believe now exactly as they did ten years ago. This simply amounts to a certificate that they have not grown-that they have not developed-and that they know just as little now as they ever did. The highest possible conception of consistency is to be true to the knowledge of today, without the slightest reference to what your opinion was years ago.

The earth flourishes, or is overrun with noxious weeds and brambles, as we apply or withhold the cultivating hand. So fares it with the intellectual system of man.

If a person is constantly evolving, constantly reading new material and being exposed to new material and growing in life, then you're becoming, hopefully, a more intelligent and well-rounded individual. If you're not then something's wrong and you're sliding back in the other direction.

I believe that we can accomplish any object that we make up our minds to, and no boy or girl ought to sit down and say, because they cannot do as well as somebody else, that they will not do anything. God has given to some people ten talents; to others, he has given one; but they who improve the one talent will live to see the day when they will far outshine those who have ten talents but fail to improve them.

Contrary to what most of us believe, happiness does not simply happen to us. It's something that we make happen, and it results from doing our best. Feeling fulfilled when we live up to our potentialities is what motivates differentiation and leads to evolution.

Whatever we may say against collections, which present authors in a disjointed form, they nevertheless bring about many excellent results. We are not always so composed, so full of wisdom, that we are able to take in at once the whole scope of a work according to its merits. Do we not mark in a book passages which seem to have a direct reference to ourselves? Young people especially, who have failed in acquiring a complete cultivation of mind, are roused in a praiseworthy way by brilliant passages.

Next to selfishness the principal cause which makes life unsatisfactory is want of mental cultivation.

He says, you have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind about history and everything else but you can’t make up an empty mind. Stock your mind, stock your mind. It is your house of treasure and no one in the world can interfere with it. If you won the Irish Sweepstakes and bought a house that needed furniture would you fill it with bits and pieces of rubbish? Your mind is your house and if you fill it with rubbish from the cinemas it will rot in your head. You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.

Every head should be cultivated.

Uncultivated minds are not full of wild flowers, like uncultivated fields. Villainous weeds grow in them and they are the haunt of toads.

Get rid of those friends of yours who make fun of you and don't believe in you. And when you leave here tonight, go home, make a phone call and fire them. Anyone that doesn't believe in you and your future, to hell with them.

Most men believe that it would benefit them if they could get a little from those who have more. How much more would it benefit them if they would learn a little from those who know more.

I always believe if you're stuck in a hole and maybe things aren't going well you will come out stronger. Everything in life is this way.

You have to write a book because you believe it has helped you, because you believe it has helped others personally and you are dying to share with it others because you know it will add value to their lives. You write it for them like a gift. You don't want anything from them. You don't want them to do anything for you. You don't even care if they all share the book with their friends, they don't all have to buy them. You're just dying to share this idea with people. Your challenge is to write it in a way that is compelling, enjoyable to read so that they will get the idea.

If you can't be a sun, be a star. For it isn't by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are.

Surely, it is much easier to respect a man who has always had respect, than to respect a man who we know was last year no better than ourselves, and will be no better next year.

I really, truly believe in learning from other people's mistakes.

We are not entitled to success we have to earn it

God Almighty created each and every one of use for a place in the world, and for the least of us to think that we were created only to be what we are and not what we can make ourselves, is to impute an improper motive to the Creator for creating is.

Learning . . . is - also an end in itself.