Madeleine L'Engle Quotes

Small minds cannot grasp great subjects.

We do have to use our minds as far as they will take us, yet acknowledging that they cannot take us all the way.

General ideas are no proof of the strength, but rather of the insufficiency of the human intellect.

Do not imagine that what we have said of the insufficiency of our understanding and of its limited extent is an assertion founded only on the Bible: for philosophers likewise assert the same, and perfectly understand it,- without having regard to any religion or opinion.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.

There are very deep and restrictive principles that determine the nature of human language and are rooted in the specific character of the human mind

Small minds can never handle great themes.

In order to draw a limit to thinking, we should have to think both sides of this limit.

The mere understanding, however useful and indispensable, is the meanest faculty in the human mind and the most to be distrusted.

Human intelligence is a limited resource. It cannot solve problems caused by ignoring fundamentals of existence.

The mind is smaller than the eye.

We know you have a great mind and all, Mother, but you don’t have much sense.

Intellectuals ... regard over-simplification as the original sin of the mind and have no use for the slogans, the unqualified assertions and sweeping generalizations.

The human mind is a curious thing. It can take just so much and no more.

Our mind, by virtue of a certain finite, limited capability, is by no means capable of putting a question to Nature that permits a continuous series of answers. The observations, the individual results of measurements, are the answers of Nature to our discontinuous questioning.

He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more.

I think that God gave us a brain, and that it's the only thing we have to survive. All life forms have some advantage, some trick, some claw, some camouflage, some poison, some speed, something to help them survive. We've got a brain. Therefore it's our duty to use our brain.

He that cannot reason is a fool.

Minds are of three kinds: one is capable of thinking for itself; another is able to understand the thinking of others; and a third can neither think for itself nor understand the thinking of others. The first is of the highest excellence, the second is excellent, and the third is worthless.

The mind of man is more intuitive than logical, and comprehends more than it can coordinate.

Let us, then, take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.

We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.

All men are capable of reason. That is the fundamental principle of democracy Because everybody's mind is capable of true knowledge, you don't have to have a special authority, or a special revelation telling you that this is the way things should be.

The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess; but proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in all those more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind.

The mind is a mechanism. It has no intelligence. The mind is a bio-computer. How can it have any intelligence? It has skill, but it has no intelligence; it has a functional utility, but it has no awareness. It is a robot; it works well but don't listen to it too much because then you will lose your inner intelligence. Then it is as if you are asking a machine to guide you, lead you. You are asking a machine which has nothing original in it.