Bruno Bettelheim Quotes

To destroy guide-boards that point in the wrong direction . . . to drive the fiend of fear from the mind . . . is the task of the Freethinker.

Freedom of mind is the proof of one's existence.

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

Thought is a key to all treasures; the miser's gains are ours without his cares. Thus I have soared above this world, where my enjoyment have been intellectual joys.

A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.

Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.

Let's say there's something operating in you called Mind. It's very powerful, but it's dampened by the body, by physicality. When you die, that tether gets cut and off the mind goes with incredible power.

I do not understand why people want to control their minds. I want them to liberate their minds.

To keep an active mind, I find that reading novels is really good.

The human mind is not meant to be governed, certainly not by any book of rules yet written; it is supposed to run itself, and we are obliged to follow it along, trying to keep up with it as best we can.

Study detains the mind by the perpetual occurrence of something new, which may gratefully strike the imagination.

sooner or later, if the activity of the mind is restricted anywhere it will cease to function even where it is allowed to be free.

Radio is the theater of the mind; television is the theater of the mindless.

Men and women with freed minds may often be mistaken, but they are seldom fooled. They may be influenced, but they cannot be intimidated. They may be perplexed, but they will never be lost.

Judicious books enlarge the mind and improve the heart.

For me, books are music for my mind and my imagination. When I am stuck in something I'm writing, I simply read my way out of being stuck. You can never waste time reading.

"I am breathing in and liberating my mind. I am breathing out and liberating my mind." One practices like this.

Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind.

Don't just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents." Translation by Sharon Lebell

Do not, under any circumstances, put this book down and turn on the teevee. The teevee debilitates our culture.

Here you discover that so long as books are kept open, then minds can never be closed.

We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind. Mind is your only ruler, sovereign. The man who is not able to develop and use his mind is bound to be the slave of the other man who uses his mind.

I would call an intellectual one whose instrument of work - his mind - is also his major source of pleasure; a man whose entertainment is his intelligence.

The detective story is the normal recreation of noble minds.