Mental Autonomy Quotes

I go in solitude, so as not to drink out of everybody's cistern. When I am among the many I live as the many do, and I do not think I really think; after a time it always seems as if they want to banish myself from myself and rob me of my soul.

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

It was one thing to use computers as a tool, quite another to let them do your thinking for you.

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

No one can stop or control your thought process or your thinking. You can think anything you want. But that doesn't seem to be the point. The thinking process has to be directed into a certain approach... not in accord with certain dogma, philosophy, or concepts. Instead, one has to know the thinker itself.

The brain runs its show incognito.

Does the brain control you or are you controlling the brain? I don't know if I'm in charge of mine.

The best protection against propaganda of any sort is the recognition of it for what it is. Only hidden and undetected oratory is really insidious. What reaches the heart without going through the mind is likely to bounce back and put the mind out of business. Propaganda taken in that way is like a drug you do not know you are swallowing. The effect is mysterious; you do not know afterwards why you feel or think the way you do.

Our thoughts are free.

Nobody is going to pour truth into your brain. It's something you have to find out for yourself.

My mind is not a bed to be made and re-made.

No one else can think or feel for you .. it's YOU .. ONLY YOU.

What's the point in having a mind if you don't use it to make judgements?

The conscious mind allows itself to be trained like a parrot, but the unconscious does not — which is why St. Augustine thanked God for not making him responsible for his dreams.

Surely there is grandeur in knowing that in the realm of thought, at least, you are without a chain; that you have the right to explore all heights and depth; that there are no walls nor fences, nor prohibited places, nor sacred corners in all the vast expanse of thought.

Fundamental ideas are not a consequence of experience, but a result of the particular constitution and activity of the mind, which is independent of all experience in its origin, though constantly combined with experience in its exercise.

Disciples do owe their masters only a temporary belief, and a suspension of their own judgment till they be fully instructed.

Place nothing above the verdict of your own mind.

Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. All people live in their own dream, in their own mind; they are in a completely different world from the one we live in. When we take something personally, we make the assumption that they know what is in our world, and we try to impose our world on their world.

Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.

Self-esteem is reliance on ones power to think.

Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work.

What does it matter where my body happens to be?' he said. 'My mind goes on working all the same.

No one thinks in your mind except you.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.