Quotes & Sayings About Extraordinary Minds

But most of all, Schneider shows us that it was Lawrence's extraordinary empathy that enabled his achievements. This ability to identify with others, to grasp their hopes and fears and understanding of events about them, was key in the sort of campaign he conducted. "In an insurgency, empathy plays an especially crucial role," Schneider writes. "It places the leader inside the hearts and minds of his own men." In an interesting aside, Schneider also observes that it enabled Lawrence to understand his superior, General Edmund Allenby. — James Schneider

Professional musicians, in general, possess what most of us would regard as remarkable powers of musical imagery. Many composers, indeed, do not compose initially or entirely at an instrument but in their minds. There is no more extraordinary example of this than Beethoven, who continued to compose (and whose compositions rose to greater and greater heights) years after he had become totally deaf. It is possible that his musical imagery was even intensified by deafness, for with the removal of normal auditory input, the auditory cortex may become hypersensitive, with heightened powers of musical imagery (and sometimes even auditory hallucinations). — Oliver Sacks

We women are weak," replied Bimala. "So I suppose we must join in the conspiracy of the weak."
"Women weak!" I exclaimed with a laugh. "Men belaud you as delicate and fragile, so as to delude you into thinking yourselves weak. But it is you women who are strong. Men make a great outward show of their so-called freedom, but those who know their inner minds are aware of their bondage. They have
manufactured scriptures with their own hands to bind themselves; with their very idealism they have made golden fetters of women to wind round their body and mind. If men had not that extraordinary faculty of entangling themselves in meshes of their own contriving, nothing could have kept them bound. But as for
you women, you have desired to conceive reality with body and soul. You have given birth to reality. You have suckled reality at your breasts. — Rabindranath Tagore

...turning someone into a bigot is the first step in turning him into a terrorist. You find someone vulnerable - someone who's lost his confidence, his income, his pride, his agency. Someone who feels humiliated by life. And then you isolate him. You fill him with fear and fury, and you see to it that he regards anybody who's different as a faceless target - a silhouette at a shooting range like Calverton - rather than a human being. But even people who've been raised on hate since birth, people whose minds have been warped and weaponized, can make a choice about who they want to be. And they can be extraordinary advocates for peace, precisely because they've seen the effects of violence, discrimination and disenfranchisement firsthand. People who have been victimized can understand more deeply than anyone how little the world needs more victims. — Zak Ebrahim

Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace. — Elbert Hubbard

Self-actualizing people - highly functioning people who live at extraordinary levels of awareness - train their minds to focus on what they intend to create and what they intend to manifest, and they won't let anybody change their mind. — Wayne Dyer

The primitive Christians perpetually trod on mystic ground, and their minds were exercised by the habits of believing the most extraordinary events — Edward Gibbon

[...] the past century has shown that dumb minds can do extraordinary damage. — Daniel Pipes

We can reproduce within our own minds the way that the world is put together for other people. This is the extraordinary privilege and adventure of anthropology. — Marshall Sahlins

But even people who've been raised since birth, people whose minds have been warped and weaponized, can make a choice about who they want to be. And they can be extraordinary advocates for peace, precisely because they've seen the effects of violence, discrimination, and disenfranchisement firsthand. — Zak Ebrahim, Jeff Giles

Great minds birth great ideas.
Extraordinary minds birth extraordinary ideas.
Transcendent minds birth transcendent ideas. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Hamilton had one of those extraordinary 18th-century minds that touched on virtually every major topic of the day. — Ron Chernow

But these great minds cannot avoid doing extraordinary things! — Samuel Richardson

There is a great good in returning to a landscape that has had extraordinary meaning in one's life. It happens that we return to such places in our minds irresistibly. There are certain villages and towns, mountains and plains that, having seen them walked in them lived in them even for a day, we keep forever in the mind's eye. They become indispensable to our well-being; they define us, and we say, I am who I am because I have been there, or there. — N. Scott Momaday

Words entangle. But if one can understand the whole significance of the ways of one's thought, the ways of our desires and their pursuits and ambitions, then there is a possibility of having or understanding that which is love. But that requires an extraordinary understanding of oneself.

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Love is not a sentiment, not romanticism, not dependent on something, and that state is extremely arduous and difficult to understand, or to be in - because our minds are always interfering, limiting, encroaching upon its functioning. Therefore it is important to understand first the mind and its ways; otherwise we shall be caught in illusions, caught in words and sensations that have very little significance. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

He meant rather that the evolution of our minds from bits of inanimate matter was more beautiful and more extraordinary than any of the miracles cataloged down through the ages by the religions of our world. — Neal Stephenson

The psychical condition of men's minds may be compared with a set of bells close together, and so arranged that in the ordinary man a bell rings only when one beside it sounds, and the vibration lasts only a moment. In the genius, when a bell sounds it vibrates so strongly that it sets in action the whole series, and remains in action throughout life. The latter kind of movement often gives rise to extraordinary conditions and absurd impulses, that may last for weeks together and that form the basis of the supposed kinship of genius with insanity. — Otto Weininger

The whole history of these books (i.e. the Gospels) is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills. — Thomas Jefferson

Minds that are stupid and incapable of science are in the order of nature to be regarded as monsters and other extraordinary phenomena; minds of this sort are rare. Hence I conclude that there are great resources to be found in children, which are suffered to vanish with their years. It is evident, therefore, that it is not of nature, but of our own negligence, we ought to complain. — Quintilian

Very few, even among those who have taken the keenest interest in the progress of the revolution in natural knowledge set afoot by the publication of the 'Origin of Species'; and who have watched, not without astonishment, the rapid and complete change which has been effected both inside and outside the boundaries of the scientific world in the attitude of men's minds towards the doctrines which are expounded in that great work, can have been prepared for the extraordinary manifestation of affectionate regard for the man, and of profound reverence for the philosopher, which followed the announcement, on Thursday last, of the death of Mr Darwin. — Thomas Henry Huxley

It" is the idea of him or her that resides in us--inspired by the "Something" in them, as Pope has it, "That gives us back the Image of our Mind." Although the perception of It must be excited by some extraordinary perturbation in the looks and personality of the adored, the aura that It broadcasts arises not merely from the singularity of an original, as Walter Benjamin supposed, but also from the fabulous success of its reproducibility in the imaginations of many others, charmed exponentially by the number of its copies. The one-of-kind item must become a type, a replicable role-icon of itself--from "a Charles Hart" or "a Nell Gwyn" to "a Mary Pickford" or "a Douglas Fairbanks"--in order to unleash the Pygmalion effect in the hearts and minds of the fans, making the idea of him or her theirs--as much or more than anything else they might call their own. — Joseph Roach

The exertions that men find it necessary to make, in order to support themselves or families, frequently awaken faculties that might otherwise have lain for ever dormant, and it has been commonly remarked that new and extraordinary situations generally create minds adequate to grapple with the difficulties in which they are involved. — Thomas Malthus

The reason why a work of genius is not easily admired from the first is that the man who has created it is extraordinary, that few other men resemble him. It is his work itself that, by fertilising the rare minds capable of understanding it, will make them increase and multiply. — Marcel Proust

Only the rare expands our minds, only as we shudder in the face of a new force do our feelings increase. Therefore the extraordinary is always the measure of all greatness. And the creative element always remains the value superior to all others and the mind superior to our minds. — Stefan Zweig

I will tell you why we have these extraordinary minds and souls, Miss Whittaker," he continued, as though he had not heard her. "We have them because there is a supreme intelligence in the universe, which wishes for communion with us. This supreme intelligence longs to be known. It calls out to us. It draws us close to its mystery, and grants us these remarkable minds, in order that we try to reach for it. It wants us to find it. It wants union with us, more than anything. — Elizabeth Gilbert

We must remember that everything is ordinary and extraordinary. It is our minds that either open or close. — Natalie Goldberg

My first film, 'Like Minds,' was with Toni Colette, who was extraordinary. I mean it was basically a mini-masterclass for acting on film at a time when all you could probably see were my eyebrows bouncing up and down on screen. — Eddie Redmayne

It has become somewhat trite, nowadays, to say that after so many years of destruction it is a kind of miracle that Paris is still standing, a miracle we thrill to every day. But if the beauty of Paris has survived wars, how extraordinary that it can do nothing against the pickaxes of the Parisians themselves when they make up their minds to demolish something, nor against the vagaries of their architects left to their own devices! — Julien Green

For the special thrilling quality of their friendship was in their complete surrender. Like two open cities in the midst of some vast plain their two minds lay open to each other. And it wasn't as if he rode into hers like a conqueror, armed to the eyebrows and seeing nothing but a gay silken flutter
nor did she enter his like a queen walking on soft petals. No, they were eager, serious travellers, absorbed in understanding what was to be seen and discovering what was hidden
making the most of this extraordinary absolute chance which made it possible for him to be utterly truthful to her and for her to be utterly sincere with him. — Katherine Mansfield

It is probable that the principal credit of miracles, visions, enchantments, and such extraordinary occurrences comes from the power of imagination, acting principally upon the minds of the common people, which are softer. — Michel De Montaigne

The cosmic perspective opens our minds to extraordinary ideas but does not leave them so open that our brains spill out, making us susceptible to believing anything we're told. The — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Wars are not a pub brawl. They are very complex projects that require an extraordinary degree of organisation, cooperation and appeasement. The ability to maintain peace at home, acquire allies abroad, and understand what goes through the minds of other people (particularly your enemies) is usually the key to victory. Hence an aggressive brute is often the worst choice to run a war. Much better is a cooperative person who knows how to appease, how to manipulate and how to see things from different perspectives. This is the stuff empire-builders are made of. The — Yuval Noah Harari

But these great minds cannot avois doing extraordinary things! — Samuel Richardson

The secret to extraordinary faith is fully engaging our MINDS, as well as our hearts, because DYNAMIC FAITH REQUIRES A HEALTHY BALANCE OF BOTH. — Patty Houser

If for no other reason, Frank Lloyd Wright would be justly famous for Fallingwater, one of the most extraordinary houses in the world. This biography of a house is also a celebration of the creative minds who envisioned it and provides all the reasons, if any are needed, why Fallingwater should be cherished as a national monument. Franklin Toker has performed an invaluable service. — Meryle Secrest

Engage people with what they expect; it is what they are able to discern and confirms their projections. It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment - that which they cannot anticipate. — Sun Tzu

And their memory made them extraordinary. In them, the unconscious knowledge of ancestral behavior called instinct had evolved. Stored in the back of their large brains were not just their own memories, but the memories of their forebears. They could recall knowledge learned by their ancestors and, under special circumstances, they could go a step beyond. They could recall their racial memory, their own evolution. And when they reached back far enough, they could merge that memory that was identical for all and join their minds, telepathically. — Jean M. Auel

Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary. — Blaise Pascal