Life Of The Mind Quotes

“After all everybody, that is, everybody who writes is interested in living inside themselves in order to tell what is inside themselves. That is why writers have to have two countries, the one where they belong and the one in which they live really. The second one is romantic, is is separate from themselves, it is not real but it is really there.”
― Gertrude Stein, Paris France

“In my brain were stored a thousand pictures.”
― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

“...as far as we are capable of knowledge we sin in neglecting to acquire it...”
― Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding

“I read, I daydreamed, I wandered the city so ardently in part because it was a means of wandering in my thoughts, and my thoughts were runaways, constantly taking me away in the midst of the conversation, the meal, the class, the work, the play, the dance, the party. They were a place I wanted to be, thinking, musing, analyzing, imagining, hoping, tracing connections, integrating new ideas, but they grabbed me and ran with me from the situations at hand over and over. I disappeared in the middle of conversations, sometimes because I was bored but just as often because someone said something so interesting that my mind chased after the idea they offered and lost track of the rest of what they said. I lived in a long reverie for years, went days without much interruption to it, which was one of the gifts of solitude.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Recollections of My Nonexistence: A Memoir

“Danny spent most of his time at the museum or in his room with the door locked, lost in books he consumed like a flame eating air, trying to stay alight.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Ninth House

“Books are in the mind, Grandfather Alessandro said. Too many books and you forget your body is in the world.”
― Tom Spanbauer, In the City of Shy Hunters

“The brown autumn came. Out of doors, it brought to the fields the prodigality of the golden harvest, —to the forest, revelations of light,⁠—and to the sky, the sharp air, the morning mist, the red clouds at evening. Within doors, the sense of seclusion, the stillness of closed and curtained windows, musings by the fireside, books, friends, conversation, and the long, meditative evenings. To the farmer, it brought surcease of toil,⁠—to the scholar, that sweet delirium of the brain which changes toil to pleasure. It brought the wild duck back to the reedy marshes of the south; it brought the wild song back to the fervid brain of the poet. Without, the village street was paved with gold; the river ran red with the reflection of the leaves. Within, the faces of friends brightened the gloomy walls; the returning footsteps of the long-absent gladdened the threshold; and all the sweet amenities of social life again resumed their interrupted reign.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kavanagh

“Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind!
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,
For there thy habitation is the heart—”
― Lord Byron

“I have always maintained that genuine intellectuals, by definition, refuse to play any institutional games at any stage of their career or intellectual life. They can’t pretend to unsee once they see. They can’t ‘wait’ until they have tenure or enough power to ‘get away’ with things or be brave in their thinking and writing. A sincere thinker can’t fake or delay what they want to question, how, and the way in which they want to put it on paper. They can’t divide things into what can be said or done before or after tenure. A sincere thinker will die of a heart attack if they don’t research, write, and say what they want to say at the very moment they are ready to do it.”
― Louis Yako

“I hope, wherever we are, we start to decolonize knowledge production through rekindling that deep and strong spark between the heart and the mind; through understanding that the path to objectivity goes through the painful corridors of subjectivity.”
― Louis Yako

“Learning is very often a question of whether someone has his soul in order, whether he can be attracted by "what is." Great things will not be seen by those whose souls are not ordered. I did not say that first. Aristotle did. But I do not mind repeating it, as if I were the first to discover it. (The Life of the Mind)”
― James V. Schall, SJ

“I do not even agree with classifying writing as 'classic' or 'contemporary'. Great writing is contemporary regardless of when it was written. It is always timely. It communicates with readers across time and space. A great piece of writing is contemporary whether written yesterday or ten centuries ago.”
― Louis Yako

“I have always maintained that genuine intellectuals, by definition, refuse to play any institutional games at any stage of their career or intellectual life. They can’t pretend to unsee once they see.”
― Louis Yako

“I personally believe (and I know many readers will find this controversial) that we should never engage with any writers or scholars whose work is intentionally Euro-American centered and purposely ignores or refuses to engage with knowledge produced by thinkers outside the West. In other words, in knowledge production, reciprocate treatment (whether in engagement or citation) can be effective in challenging and changing the rules of the game.”
― Louis Yako

“There are two creative conditions that I hold near and dear to my heart and mind when it comes to knowledge production: first, the more we know, the more we know how little we know. That makes it such that we soon realize how hard it is to add something new to the wide and deep ocean of knowledge. Second, it is hard to justify the existence of any work, in any field of knowledge, that doesn’t fully exceed everything that has ever been done in that field. If these two creative conditions are true, then that explains why it is hard to produce groundbreaking knowledge in all its forms, shapes, and manifestations.”
― Louis Yako

“The secret of producing meaningful and powerful knowledge is simple: be sincere. We must strive to be sincere in the way we approach any question, to be sincere in understanding our limits and blind spots, and to acknowledge our strengths and weaknesses at all times. I have learned that objectivity is impossible, but sincerity is not. It is the latter that brings us the closest possible to objectivity, and only through sincerity we can build bridges of reconciliation between the subjective and the objective.”
― Louis Yako

“A long time ago, I discovered that all I have been taught about the disconnect and the contradiction between the heart and the mind is false and misleading. I have learned to feel with my mind and think with my heart. I have learned that the two are not enemies, but Siamese twins – you can’t silence one without crushing the other, too.”
― Louis Yako

“The paradox of writing … is that each work is but a chapter from one and the same book when considering the big picture. However, the only way I can justify writing any new work is if that work exceeds in its contributions everything I have ever written before.”
― Louis Yako