Embodied Mind Quotes & Sayings

The embodiment of mind leads us to a philosophy of embodied realism. Our concepts cannot be a direct reflection of external, objective, mind-independent reality because our sensorimotor system plays a crucial role in shaping them. On the other hand, it is the involvement of the sensorimotor system in the conceptual system that keeps the conceptual system very much in touch with the world. — George Lakoff

If you had done something twice, you are likely to do it again. — Brian Kernighan

If he comes back," she nodded. I thought I saw tears in her eyes but I was mistaken. In all my life, I was never to see her cry. And also he was never to come back. Without interrupting each other, we both said at the same time, "Let's never get out of touch with each other." And we never have, although her death has come between us. — Norman Maclean

For real human beings, the only realism is an embodied realism. — George Lakoff

The waking world isn't outside and separate from our mind. It's brought forth and enacted through our imaginative perception of it. — Evan Thompson

You're judging her by her literacy," Tara says. "You're a literacist."
"You've made that up. — Melina Marchetta

The disembodied being stays in the same state of mind that it was in when it was embodied, unless it does something to change that while it is out of the body. — Frederick Lenz

I came here with nothing, with maybe a hundred bucks in my pocket and had to get a job. And these wealthy people who had made their money themselves, I worked for. It did show me what could be achieved in America, what's possible if you have some vision to take big risks. — Mark Burnett

The properties of mind are not purely mental: They are shaped in crucial ways by the body and brain and how the body can function in everyday life. The embodied mind is thus very much of this world. Our flesh is inseparable from what Merleau-Ponty called the "flesh of the world" and what David Abram refers to as "the-more-than-human-world." Our body is intimately tied to what we walk on, sit on, touch, taste, smell, see, breathe, and move within. Our corporeality is part of the corporeality of the world. — George Lakoff

The human mind is a relational and embodied process that regulates the flow of energy and information. — Daniel J. Siegel

The mechanism by which spirituality becomes passionate is metaphor. An ineffable God requires metaphor not only to be imagined but to be approached, exhorted, evaded, confronted, struggled with, and loved. Through metaphor, the vividness, intensity, and meaningfulness of ordinary experiences becomes the basis of a passionate spirituality. An ineffable God becomes vital through metaphor: The Supreme Being. The Prime Mover. The Creator. The Almighty. The Father. The King of Kings. Shepherd. Potter. Lawgiver. Judge. Mother. Lover. Breath.
The vehicle by which we are moved in passionate spirituality is metaphor. The mechanism of such metaphor is bodily. It is a neural mechanism that recruits our abilities to perceive, to move, to feel, and to envision in the service not only of theoretical and philosophical thought, but of spiritual experience. — George Lakoff

I could stand before him, be in his arms as I was just then, and still be lost to him, some phantom of a desire he cherished more than he cherished me, the woman he claimed to love. — Alexander Chee

When you need encouragement, think of the qualities the people around you have: this one's energy, that one's modesty, another's generosity, and so on. Nothing is as encouraging as when virtues are visibly embodied in the people around us, when we're practically showered with them. It's good to keep this in mind. — Marcus Aurelius

Public image is extremely important in American society and I observed personally that the Presidency of John F. Kennedy did much in the public mind for Harvard. Harvard was an excellent school before Kennedy, but Kennedy embodied a new vision for the United States: a leader who caught the world's imagination and that reflected on his alma mater, Harvard. — Henry Rosovsky

In philosophy, metaphorical pluralism is the norm. Our most important abstract philosophical concepts, including time, causation, morality, and the mind, are all conceptualized by multiple metaphors, sometimes as many as two dozen. What each philosophical theory typically does is to choose one of those metaphors as "right," as the true literal meaning of the concept. One reason there is so much argumentation across philosophical theories is that different philosophers have chosen different metaphors as the "right" one, ignoring or taking as misleading all other commonplace metaphorical structurings of the concept. Philosophers have done this because they assume that a concept must have one and only one logic. But the cognitive reality is that our concepts have multiple metaphorical structurings. — George Lakoff

Sometimes it just feels like the only thing you do is play hockey and eat. — Henrik Lundqvist

The computer model will be replaced by an organic model, in which the brain-mind is embodied - part of a whole, dynamic, living organism: one driven by emotional forces, not only cognitive ones. — Siri Hustvedt

Science is knowledge certain and evident in itself, or by the principles from which it is deducted, or with which it is certainly connected. It is subjective, as existing in the mind; objective, as embodied in truths; speculative, as leading to do something, as in practical science. — William Fleming

There is no real person whose embodiment plays no role in meaning, whose meaning is purely objective and defined by the external world, and whose language can fit the external world with no significant role played by mind, brain, or body. Because our conceptual systems grow out of our bodies, meaning is grounded in and through our bodies. Because a vast range of our concepts are metaphorical, meaning is not entirely literal and the classical correspondence theory of truth is false. — George Lakoff

There is no poststructuralist person - no completely decentered subject for whom all meaning is arbitrary, totally relative, and purely historically contingent, unconstrained by body and brain. The mind is not merely embodied, but embodied in such a way that our conceptual systems draw largely upon the commonalities of our bodies and of the environments we live in. The result is that much of a person's conceptual system is either universal or widespread across languages and cultures. Our conceptual systems are not totally relative and not merely a matter of historical contingency, even though a degree of conceptual relativity does exist and even though historical contingency does matter a great deal. The grounding of our conceptual systems in shared embodiment and bodily experience creates a largely centered self, but not a monolithic self. — George Lakoff And Mark Johnson

That sounded like an insult, but he wasn't sure. "What's a dillweed?"
"You. You're a dill weed."
Well, that cleared things right up. — Erin McCarthy

Whoever is afraid must needs be dependent; a weak thing needs support. That is why the primitive mind, from deep psychological necessity, begot religious instruction and embodied it in a magician or a priest. — Carl Jung

Engagement is the conscious inhabitation of your body and mind. Practice is happening when your open awareness is moving with, in and through your embodied activity. Intrinsic to practice is your conscious participation with your life. Engagement is the conduction of your free and open awareness through your activities, whatever they may be. — Rob McNamara

The Order of the Divine mind, embodied in the Divine Law, is beautiful. What should a man do but try to reproduce it, so far as possible, in his daily life? — C.S. Lewis

[P]hilosophical theories are structured by conceptual metaphors that constrain which inferences can be drawn within that philosophical theory. The (typically unconscious) conceptual metaphors that are constitutive of a philosophical theory have the causal effect of constraining how you can reason within that philosophical framework. — George Lakoff

Well, for street clothes, a lot of what I wear is Jones New York. I am well-endowed in the derriere, and they can handle that. — Gloria Gaynor

The animals might embody certain traits. We think of tigers as being ferocious, etc. But to my mind, it was the other way around: the humans embodied certain animal traits. — Yann Martel

The problem with classical disembodied scientific realism is that it takes two intertwined and inseparable dimensions of all experience - the awareness of the experiencing organism and the stable entities and structures it encounters - and erects them as separate and distinct entities called subjects and objects. What disembodied realism ... misses is that, as embodied, imaginative creatures, we never were separated or divorced from reality in the first place. What has always made science possible is our embodiment, not our transcendence of it, and our imagination, not our avoidance of it. — George Lakoff

When we bring our mind into our body, the body becomes mindful, and the mind becomes embodied — Donna Farhi

We categorize as we do because we have the brains and bodies we have and because we interact in the world as we do. — George Lakoff

To acheive happiness, we should make certain that we are never without an important goal. — Earl Nightingale

Cognitive science has something of enormous importance to contribute to human freedom: the ability to learn what our unconscious conceptual systems are like and how our cognitive unconscious functions. If we do not realize that most of our thought is unconscious and that we think metaphorically, we will indeed be slaves to the cognitive unconscious. Paradoxically, the assumption that we have a radically autonomous rationality as traditionally conceived actually limits our rational autonomy. It condemns us to cognitive slavery - to an unaware and uncritical dependence on our unconscious metaphors. To maximize what conceptual freedom we can have, we must be able to see through and move beyond philosophies that deny the existence of an embodied cognitive unconscious that governs most of our mental lives. — George Lakoff

What is this world condition? Body is the world condition. And with body and form goes feeling, perception, consciousness, and all the activities throughout the world. The arising of form and the ceasing of form-everything that has been heard, sensed, and known, sought after and reached by the mind-all this is the embodied world, to be penetrated and realized. — Gautama Buddha

The mind is inherently embodied.
Thought is mostly unconscious.
Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical. — George Lakoff

I just feel really good about my accomplishments. I haven't had, like, a party because a deal goes through or something like that. I don't know. I need to develop that - I need to have something that I do when things go right. — Curtis Jackson

I remember her, not a girl but the girl. The brains behind the all time top ten comic book vixens only wish they could conjure a a siren the likes of Susan Glenn, beneath my feet my own private earthquake registered an eight when Susan Glenn was near. In her presence all was beautiful before she arrived turned grotesque and in her shadows others became goblinesque, if she approached Susan Glenn she didn't walk she floated, accompanied by Pyrotechnics spectacals that left me feeling a foot tall. She embodied every desireable quality I have ever wanted. In my mind I was a peasant before a Queen. And so Susan Glenn and I were never a thing, if I could do it again, I'd do it differently. — Keifer Sutherland

Either by silencing the mind or by opening the heart, today's man can become tomorrow's God, tomorrow's Divinity. And embodied Divinity soon becomes revealed Immortality. — Sri Chinmoy