Ernst Mach Quotes

I can easily hold two opposing beliefs at the same time without any problem, which I find - well, mind-expanding, really.

It is as deadly for a mind to have a system as to have none. Therefore it will have to decide to combine both.

Our capacity for belief is so plastic, we can convince ourselves of anything. Believing is seeing.

The ability and willingness to keep two opposing views in mind at the same time are hallmarks of adulthood.

Humans can think inhuman thoughts.

Every man should be capable of all ideas.

I had learnt from experience that many false opinions may be exchanged for true ones, without in the least altering the habits of mind of which false opinions are made.

Try fighting with your head for a change... it's a good one, even if it does resist learning.

If you strike upon a thought that baffles you, break off from that entanglement and try another, so shall your wits be fresh to start again.

Fascinating, Doidge's book is a remarkable and hopeful portrait of the endless adaptability of the human brain.

Philosophers say man forms himself in dialogue.

Ideologies are too seductive anyway. It does a man good to see things from a different point of view.

Reason is one thing and faith is another and reason can as little be made a substitute for faith, as faith can be made a substitute for reason.

The mind is malleable. Our life can be greatly transformed by even a minimal change in how we manage our thoughts and perceive and interpret the world. Happiness is a skill. It requires effort and time.

I think, though, that perspective-awareness may follow from a kind of speaking that also came into my work more recently - the "assay" poems (some labeled that, some not) that engage an abstraction or object from multiple angles.

In fact, philosophy is universal in scope. No man can live without a world view; therefore, there is no man who is not a philosopher.

The young mind is pliable and imitates, but in more advanced states grows rigid and must be warmed and softened before it will receive a deep impression.

As people used to be wrong about the motion of the sun, so they are still wrong about the motion of the future. The future stands still, it is we who move in infinite space.

Man's brain, enlarged fortuitously, invented words in an ambitious attempt to learn how to think, only to have them usurped by his emotions. But we still try.

To understand a new idea, break an old habit.

In order to acquire learning, we must first shake ourselves free of it.

You've got to be able to hold a lot of contradictory ideas in your mind without going nuts. I feel like to do my job right, when I walk out on stage I've got to feel like it's the most important thing in the world. Also I've got to feel like, well, it's only rock and roll. Somehow you've got to believe both of those things.

One of the difficulties of politics is that politicians are shocked by those who are really prepared to let their thinking reach any conclusion. Political thinking consists in deciding upon the conclusion first and then finding good arguments for it. An open mind is considered irresponsible- and perhaps it really is.

The need for certainty is the greatest disease the Mind faces

Though as he'd say, what is 'belief' but a willingness to suspend the negatives?