Adam Gopnik Quotes

Our minds are all different and I believe cultivating a keen introspective sensitivity is absolutely essential in discovering our potential.

It is a great proof of talents to be able to recall the mind from the senses, and to separate thought from habit.

Of all the thoughts that rise in the mind, the thought 'I' is the first thought.

To go out of your mind once a day is tremendously important, because by going out of your mind you come to your senses. And if you stay in your mind all of the time, you are over rational, in other words you are like a very rigid bridge which because it has no give; no craziness in it, is going to be blown down by the first hurricane.

You have to allow your mind to create and then if you want to censor something and bring it down or point it in a different direction, then you can do it.

All thought of something is at the same time self-consciousness [...] At the root of all our experiences and all our reflections, we find [...] a being which immediately recognises itself, [...] and which knows its own existence, not by observation and as a given fact, nor by inference from any idea of itself, but through direct contact with that existence. Self-consciousness is the very being of mind in action.

I never go anywhere or do anything that transports me outside the boundaries of my mind.

When the mind soars in pursuit of the things conceived in space...it pursues emptiness; but when man dives deep within himself, he experiences the fullness of existence.

That is the trouble with many inventors; they lack patience. They lack the willingness to work a thing out slowly and clearly and sharply in their mind, so that they can actually "feel it work." They want to try their first idea right off; and the result is they use up lots of money and lots of good material, only to find eventually that they are working in the wrong direction. We all make mistakes, and it is better to make them before we begin.

I know this much about racing in the rain. I know it is about balance. It is about anticipation and patience... [it is also] about the mind! It is about owning one's body... It is about believing that you are not you; you are everything. And everything is you.

The most important conversations, briefings, meeting, and lectures you will ever have will be those you hold with yourself in the privacy of your own mind.

Learn to know yourself... to search realistically and regularly the processes of your own mind and feelings.

O Reader! had you in your mind Such stores as silent thought can bring, O gentle Reader! you would find A tale in everything.

When we turn the mind inwards, God manifests as the inner consciousness.

I love the dark hours of my being. My mind deepens into them. There I can find, as in old letters, the days of my life, already lived, and held like a legend, and understood.

I can imagine anything except having no imagination.

I [who] am perpetually making notes in the margin of my mind for some final statement.

I also know that we should cultivate our gardens.

All too often, when it comes to our own minds, we are surprisingly mindless. We sail on, blithely unaware of how much we are missing, of how little we grasp of our own thought process - and how much better we could be if only we'd taken the time to understand and to reflect.

One reason why men and women lose their heads so often is that they use them so little! It is the same with everything. If we have anything that is valuable, it must be put to some sort of use. If a man's muscles are neglected, he soon has none, or rather none worth mentioning. The more the mind is used the more flexible it becomes, and the more it takes upon itself new interests.

Our minds are forced to become fixed upon different things by an attraction in them which we cannot resist. To control the mind, to place it just where we want it, requires special training. It cannot be done in any other way. In the study of religion the control of the mind is absolutely necessary. We have to turn the mind back upon itself in this study.

Only when the mind is completely alone can it know what is beauty, and not in any other state.

When you start meditating on your ego, on your thoughts, on your mind, you are suddenly separate, because whatsoever you meditate on, you are separate from it. That has become the object and you have become the subject.

The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back.