John Steinbeck Quotes

I've always been extremely puritanical.

Minds are simply what brains do.

Insofar as she recognized at all that she was dreaming, she realized that she must be exploring her subconscious mind. She had heard it said that humans are supposed only to use about a tenth of their brains, and that no one was really clear what the other nine tenths were for, but she had certainly never heard it suggested that they were used for storing penguins.

Something I owe to the soil that grew-More to the life that fed-But most to Allah who gave me two Separate sides of my head. I would go without shirt or shoes, Friends, tobacco, or bread Sooner than for an instant lose Either side of my head.

Puritanism was an honourable mood; it was a noble fad. In other words, it was a highly creditable mistake.

Romantic love is not an emotion. ... It's a drive. It comes from the motor of the mind, the wanting part of the mind, the craving part of the mind.

Chess holds its master in its own bonds, shackling the mind and brain so that the inner freedom of the very strongest must suffer.

As human, we all have the same human potential, unless there is some sort of retarded brain function. The wonderful human brain is the source of our strength and the source of our future, provided we utilize it in the right direction. If we use the brilliant human mind in the wrong way, it is really a disaster.

I write letters to my right brain all the time. They're just little notes. And right brain, who likes to get little notes from me, will often come through within a day or two.

Everything is a reenactment. We are reenacting the world in the mind. The world is not inside there. It does not reside in the gray matter of the brain.

The universe (he said) offers a paradox too great for the finite mind to grasp. As the living brain cannot conceive of a nonliving brain — although it may think it can — the finite mind cannot grasp the infinite.

At the level of the mind, you are part of the human mind; at the level of the brain you are part of the global brain. This is a perfect example of becoming the change that you want to see.

Too rigid scruples are concealed pride.

I'm your mind", it claims. "You can't parse ME into dendrites and synapses

My grandfather was a Pentecostal preacher. It was a sin to even pluck your eyebrows, and they thought it was a sin for me to be there looking like Jezebel.

There is a distinct difference between having an open mind and having a hole in your head from which your brain leaks out.

When one reads hurriedly and nervously, having in mind written tests and examinations, one's brain becomes encumbered with a lot of bric-a-brac for which there seems to be little use.

When you understand how the mind-brain functions together, you know that faith, which is believing before seeing, is the natural process of creation.

We pass thoughts around, from mind to mind, so compulsively and with such speed that the brains of mankind often appear, functionally, to be undergoing fusion.

There is a looming chasm between what your brain knows and what your mind is capable of accessing.

Brain: an apparatus with which we think that we think. Mind, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain.

The mind reproduces itself by transmitting its symbols to other intermediaries, human and mechanical, than the particular brain that first assembled them.

We are made up of an entire parliament of pieces and parts and subsystems. Beyond a collection of local expert systems, we are collections of overlapping, ceaselessly reinvented mechanism, a group of competing factions. The conscious mind fabricates stories to explain the sometimes inexplicable dynamics of the subsystem inside brain. It can be disquieting to consider the extent to which all of our actions are driven by hardwired systems doing what they do best while we overlay stories about choices.

We are not passive exhibitors of visual or auditory or tactile images. We have selves. We have a Me that is automatically present in our minds right now.