Hilaire Belloc Quotes

What we can do should never by itself determine what we choose to do, yet this is the way technology tends to work.

Man must shape his tools lest they shape him.

Technology is not destiny.

Man now has the power to put an end to his own history.

In the end the question is: Who is to be master, man or his machines? As long as the control over technology rests primarily on economic calculation, the victor is not likely to be man.

Control your own mind, and you may never be controlled by the mind of another.

Your mind is a tool you can choose to use any way you wish.

Maybe we need to look upon technologies and social networks as things that come out of us, not things that lead us. We can be on top of these things instead of them bein' on top of us as human beings.

Most minds are the slaves of external circumstances, and conform to any hand that undertakes to mould them.

Bondage and Liberation are of the mind alone.

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.

Boredom is what happens to people who have no control over their minds.

Once I realized that the only thing I can actually control in this life is my own mind, how I choose to react, feel, and perceive, I felt immediately liberated.

You are not a helpless victim of your own thoughts, but rather a master of your own mind.

Religion becomes a matter of belief, and belief acts as a limitation on the mind; and the mind then is never free.

A prison is confining to the body, but whether it affects the mind, depends entirely upon the mind.

I don't want to be a mind rapist!

If we allow everything access to our mind, we are simply asking to be kept in a state of mental turmoil or bondage. For nothing enters the mind without having an effect for good or evil.

Freedom is a state of mind, I said wondering where I'd heard it before, not a state of being. We are all slaves to gravity and morality and the vicissitudes of nature. Our genes govern us much more than we'd like to think. Our bodies can not know absolute freedom but our minds can, can at least try.

Still the mind smiles at its own rebellions.

Are you a person—with volition and maybe some stubbornness and at least the capacity if not the actual determination to do something surprising—or are you a tool? A tool just serves its user. It’s only as good as the skill of its user, and it’s not good for anything else. So if you want to accomplish something special—something more than you can do for yourself—you can’t use a tool. You have to use a person and hope the surprises will work in your favor. You have to use something that’s free to not be what you had in mind.

All the mind's activity is easy if it is not subjected to reality.

The perversion of the mind is only possible when those who should be heard in its defence are silent.

You look like a human being, but you don't have a mind of your own.

The mind is free, whate'er afflict the man, A King's a King, do Fortune what she can.