Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes

The mind will ever be unstable that has only prejudices to rest on.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.

Mathematicians have a certain type of mind, and climbers have a certain type of mind, because climbing poses these incredibly interesting problems for them.

O impotence of mind, in body strong! But what is strength without a double share Of wisdom, vast, unwieldy, burdensome, Proudly secure, yet liable to fall By weakest subtleties, not made to rule, But to subserve where wisdom bears command.

Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical.

Too much gravity argues a shallow mind.

having considerable mind, changing it became almost as ponderous an operation as moving a barn, although not nearly so stable.

A lot of people are lazy when it comes to making up their own mind about something, you know? If you're labelled one way then they think thats how you are. It takes too much time to really look into things.

The mind must be trained, rather than the memory.

It is well for people who think, to change their minds occasionally in order to keep them clean.

If we are to use our minds rightly, we must live in an attitude of constant openness and learning.

It's those changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes nothing remains quite the same. With all of our running and all of our cunning, if we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane.

The heart does not go backward. Only the mind.

Eutrapelia . "A happy and gracious flexibility," Pericles calls this quality of the Athenians...lucidity of thought, clearness and propriety of language, freedom from prejudice and freedom from stiffness, openness of mind, amiability of manners.

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

Tranquillity consisteth in a steadiness of the mind; and how can that vessel that is beaten upon by contrary waves and winds, and tottereth to either part, be said to keep a steady course? Resolution is the only mother of security.

We sow the seeds of our future hells or happiness by the way we open or close our minds right now.

The point is that we are among those who cannot get their mouths around all the little Yeses that add up to tacit acceptance of a world run by crackpot realists and subject to blind drift. And that, you see, is something to which we do belong; we belong to those who are still capable of personally rejecting. Our minds are not yet captive.

The mind doth shape itself to its own wants, and can bear all things.

He well knew his mind's natural tendency to be endlessly on a thousand subjects at once, to flit from this to that and to the next thing to no particular purpose--indeed, he called it his "butterfly mind.

Anyone who makes up their mind about an issue before they hear the issue is a fool.

The real basic power of an individual isn't what he or she knows; it's the ability to think and learn and face new challenges.