Read Minds Quotes & Sayings

It was as if they could read each other's minds. No, not minds: each other's mindlessness. — Margaret Atwood

Writers and artists build by hand little worlds that they hope might effect change in real minds, in the real world where stories are read. A story can make us cry and laugh, break our hearts, or make us angry enough to change the world. — Grant Morrison

If one were to reply that those who compose these books write them as fictions, and therefore are not obliged to consider the fine points of truth, I should respond that the more truthful the fiction, the better it is, and the more probable and possible, the more pleasing. Fictional tales must engage the minds of those who read them, and by restraining exaggeration and moderating impossibility, they enthrall the spirit and thereby astonish, captivate, delight, and entertain, allowing wonder and joy to move together at the same pace; none of these things can be accomplished by fleeing verisimilitude and mimesis, which together constitute perfection in writing. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Some people have read a few Marxist books and think themselves quite learned but what they have read has not penetrated, has not struck root in their minds, so that they do not know how to use it and their class feelings remain as of old. Others are very conceited and having learned some book-phrases, think them terrific and are very cocky; but whenever a storm blows up, they take a stand very different from that of the workers and the majority of the peasants. They waver while the latter stand firm, they equivocate while the latter are forthright. — Mao Zedong

Those who read books cannot understand the teachings and, what's more, may even go astray. But those who try to observe the things going on in the mind, and always take that which is true in their own minds as their standard, never get muddled. They are able to comprehend suffering, and ultimately will understand Dharma. Then, they will understand the books they read. — Buddhadasa Bhikkhu

As an author, I realise, you're on your own. You have to do everything you can to help The Book. If I make sure people know it's out there, they can make up their own minds whether they want to read it. — Tibor Fischer

[Our] minds are molded in many different ways - often in ways we are not aware of at the time. I am convinced that many things - the films we watch, the television we see, the music we listen to, the books we read - have a great effect on us. — Billy Graham

It was Sci-Fi and fantasy that got me reading, and Sci-Fi writers in particular have pack rat minds. They introduce all sorts of interesting themes and ideas into their books, and so for me it was a short leap to go from the fantasy and Sci-Fi genres to folklore, mythology, ancient history and philosophy. I did not read philosophy because I set out to become a philosopher; I read it because it looked interesting. — Terry Pratchett

This consists in not taking a book into one's hand merely because it is interesting the great public at the time - such as political or religious pamphlets, novels, poetry, and the like, which make a noise and reach perhaps several editions in their first and last years of existence. Remember rather that the man who writes for fools always finds a large public: and only read for a limited and definite time exclusively the works of great minds, those who surpass other men of all times and countries, and whom the voice of fame points to as such. These alone really educate and instruct.

One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind — Arthur Schopenhauer

Read (or listen to on CD) Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand This book is a fictional cautionary tale of what would happen if the most ambitious, innovative thinkers were no longer rewarded for using their minds to help advance society. — Steve Siebold

Children with autism are constantly testing and pursuing truth. They are a bundle of contradictions. They love order and routine, yet often have the most amazingly inventive and creative minds. They may appear to follow rules, but are also the most likely people to come up with a revolutionary new idea. They feel emotion intensly, but often seem to struggle to read facial expressions. — Adele Devine

Here's a freebie: Don't play poker with a kid who can read minds. — James Patterson

These guys are fakes. All they've got on their minds is impressing the new girls with the big words they're so proud of, while sticking their hanse up their skirts. And when they graduate,they cut their hair short and march off to work for Mitsubishi or IBM or Fuji Bank. They marry pretty wives who've never read Marx and have kids they give fancy names to that are enough to make you puke. Smash what educational-industrial complex? Don't make me laugh! — Haruki Murakami

A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants: demagogues can persecute writers and tell them what to write as much as they like, but they cannot vanish what has been written in the past, though they try often enough ... People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think for yourself. — Doris Lessing

In Berkeley and San Francisco, the revolution didn't seem to far away. A lot of white radicals, hippies, Chicanos, Blacks, and Asians were ready to get down. But i hadn't forgotten the hard hats and the red necks and the bible belt and the so called middle amerikans who had elected Nixon. I couldn't imagine how the "new left" was talking to those people, much less organizing and changing their minds. I decided the only way i would come up with answers was to on keep studying and struggling. I didn't know how half of what i was studying would fit in but i figured it would all come in handy some day. I read about guerrilla warfare and clandestine struggle without having the faintest idea that one day i would go underground. It's kind of funny when i think about it because reading that stuff had probably saved my life a million times. — Assata Shakur

But only part of him was listening. Another part, even if it hadn't read Chomsky or Jung or Sheldrake - who had time for dead guys anyway? - at least had a basic understanding of what those guys had gone on about. Quantum nonlocality, quantum consciousness - Desjardins had seen too many cases of mass coincidence to dismiss the idea that nine billion human minds could be imperceptibly interconnected somehow. He'd never really thought about it much, but on some level he'd believed in the Collective Unconscious for years.
He just hadn't realized that the fucking thing had a death wish. — Peter Watts

All we have to do when reading Bleak House is to relax and let our
spines take over. Although we read with our minds, the seat of
artistic delight is between the shoulder blades. That little shiver
behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity
has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship
the spine and its tingle. — Vladimir Nabokov

Some leaders expect the team to read their minds on priorities, so they never provide the written and verbal guidance that we all need to feel we are contributing. Others can be heard shouting new priorities on an hourly basis. Both habits are very demotivating. — Martin Zwilling

Over the centuries, this interpretation and reinterpretation creates a long chain connecting a writer to all future readers- who frequently read each other as well as the original. Virginia Woolf had a beautiful vision of generations interlinked in this way: of how "minds are threaded together- how any live mind is of the very same stuff as Plato's & Euripides ... It is this common mind that binds the whole world together; & all the world is mind." This capacity for living on through readers' inner worlds over long periods of history is what makes a book like the 'Essays' a true classic. As it is reborn differently in each mind, it also brings those minds together. — Sarah Bakewell

I think Dr. Willis McNelly at the California State University at Fullerton put it best when he said that the true protagonist of an sf story or novel is an idea and not a person. If it is *good* sf the idea is new, it is stimulating, and, probably most important of all, it sets off a chain-reaction of ramification-ideas in the mind of the reader; it so-to-speak unlocks the reader's mind so that the mind, like the author's, begins to create. Thus sf is creative and it
inspires creativity, which mainstream fiction by-and-large does not do. We who read sf (I am speaking as a reader now, not a writer) read it because we love to experience this chain-reaction of ideas being set off in our minds by something we read, something with a new idea in it; hence the very best since fiction ultimately winds up being a collaboration between author and reader, in which both create and enjoy doing it: joy is the essential and final ingredient of science fiction, the joy of discovery of newness. — Philip K. Dick

The power of equations lies in the philosophically difficult correspondence between mathematics, a collective creation of human minds, and an external physical reality. Equations model deep patterns in the outside world. By learning to value equations, and to read the stories they tell, we can uncover vital features of the world around us ... — Ian Stewart

Great changes in the destiny of mankind can be effected only in the minds of little children. — Herbert Read

But yesterday the word of Caesar might
Have stood against the world; now lies he there.
And none so poor to do him reverence.
O masters, if I were disposed to stir
Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,
I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong,
Who, you all know, are honourable men:
I will not do them wrong; I rather choose
To wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you,
Than I will wrong such honourable men.
But here's a parchment with the seal of Caesar;
I found it in his closet, 'tis his will:
Let but the commons hear this testament
Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read
And they would go and kiss dead Caesar's wounds
And dip their napkins in his sacred blood,
Yea, beg a hair of him for memory,
And, dying, mention it within their wills,
Bequeathing it as a rich legacy
Unto their issue. — William Shakespeare

Often leaders have the best intentions, but people cannot read their minds. That's why it's important to declare yourself: Tell people why you choose to lead and the code you live by. — Douglas Conant

It would be a serious mistake to think of Billy Graham or any other television revivalist as a latter-day Jonathan Edwards or Charles Finney. Edwards was one of the most brilliant and creative minds ever produced by America. His contribution to aesthetic theory was almost as important as his contribution to theology. His interests were mostly academic; he spent long hours each day in his study. He did not speak to his audiences extemporaneously. He read his sermons, which were tightly knit and closely reasoned expositions of theological doctrine — Neil Postman

He: Have you read Tolkien?
Me: No.
He: He's behind a lot of the way young people's minds are working. I can't make head or tail of it.

Chief of R&D for a transworld chemical industry (He) holding forth to R.D Laing (Me) about the infiltration of the 'extreme left wing' into American society [28 January 1973]. — R.D. Laing

Why should I have to ask you? You're a grown man! You should just know!
And there it is, kiddies. The Famous Female Mind Fuck.
That's short for: If you can't read their minds? You're fucked — Emma Chase

Do you think the porter and the cook have no anecdotes, no experiences, no wonders for you? The walls of their minds are scrawled all over with thoughts. They shall one day bring a lantern and read the inscriptions. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Intellectual questions and doubts naturally arise when we read Bible stories because to our rational minds they often seem so utterly unbelievable. Perhaps we need a new frame of reference. When we open the Bible we should enter its pages with an attitude of Bring it on! Only then will we see the power of this incredible book. — Ruth A. Tucker

Consider these people, then, their way of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of their voice; look at them attentively; observe the literature they read, the things which give them pleasure, the words which come forth out of their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture of their minds; would any amount of wealth be worth having with the condition that one was to become just like these people by having it? — Matthew Arnold

I didn't care ... about heroes who could read minds or walk through walls or do magic. The heroes I liked had courage and knew more real stuff than those who opposed them. — Homer Hickam

The writer whose words are going to be read by children has a heavy responsibility. And yet, despite the undeniable fact that the children's minds are tender, they are also far more tough than many people realize, and they have an openness and an ability to grapple with difficult concepts which many adults have lost. Writers of children's literature are set apart by their willingness to confront difficult questions. — Madeleine L'Engle

There is no evidence that dogs have the kind of complex emotional lives and value systems that we do. It's one reason why we love them so much, in fact. They are neither "good" nor "bad." They don't hold grudges, act in petty ways, or seek revenge. They read our moods, but not our minds. — Jon Katz

When you assume you make a you-know-what out of U and me. Yep, so let's stop assuming so much. We are often quick to explain details to strangers, who we understand might not be reading our minds, but we often assume that those people closest to us, those who share our household such as spouses, children parents and siblings, can read our minds. And we get upset with them when they don't go figure.
I wonder how many angry words are directed not at an action or inaction as would at first appear, but simply at the fact that somebody did not read our minds.
So let's give those people we care most about the benefit of the doubt and do a little less assuming and a little more explaining. — David Leonhardt

Few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history that it shall enforce our own prejudices. If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning. — Virginia Woolf

We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention. Read not the Times. Read the Eternities.. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven. — Henry David Thoreau

Everything in this world happens for a reason yet nothing in this world comes free. Hard work, endurance, determination, persistence, and strong will are key, But without faith you can only go so far before you lose yourself We are all hearts, minds, bodies, and souls searching for something - you are not the only one, So search, and you shall discover, look, and you shall certainly find, read and you shall only behold that the most logical of all answers was always right there before your very eyes' — Moez Masoud

As we forge deeper into this issue of forgiveness, we must be prepared to open up and discuss things that bother us before they escalate to a crisis level. We must examine our struggles with forgiveness in which there are not overt offenses or blatant betrayals. I'm convinced that seeds of resentment take root in the silent frustrations that never get discussed. Other people cannot read our minds
or our palms!
and that is why we have tongues to speak. — T.D. Jakes

Who can say if the thoughts you have in your mind as you read these words are the same thoughts I had in my mind as I typed them? We are different, you and I, and the qualia of our consciousnesses are as divergent as two stars at the ends of the universe.

And yet, whatever has been lost in translation in the long journey of my thoughts through the maze of civilization to your mind, I think you do understand me, and you think you do understand me. Our minds managed to touch, if but briefly and imperfectly.

Does that thought not make the universe seem just a bit kinder, a bit brighter, a bit warmer and more human?

We live for such miracles. — Ken Liu

The truth is that we won't receive the support we need until we ask for it. Just because we can do it all doesn't mean we should. And when we don't speak up about our needs, we're asking our loved ones to read our minds - and then we resent them when they fail our test. By not being open and honest about the support we need, we're selling ourselves short and setting our relationships up for failure. — Jessica Ortner

I had read four thousand pages of letters by Lawrence and I wanted thousands of pages more... I wanted them not to end. And yet, at the same time that I was wishing they would not come to an end, I was hurrying through these books because however much you are enjoying a book, however much you want it never to end, you are always eager for it to end. However much you are enjoying a book you are always flicking to the end, counting to see how many pages are left, looking forward to the time when you can put the book down and have done with it. At the back of our minds, however much we are enjoying a book, we come to the end of it and some little voice is always saying, "Thank Christ for that! — Geoff Dyer

We pass the word around; we ponder how the case is put by different people, we read the poetry; we meditate over the literature; we play the music; we change our minds; we reach an understanding. Society evolves this way, not by shouting each other down, but by the unique capacity of unique, individual human beings to comprehend each other. — Lewis Thomas

We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century - the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?" - lies where we have never suspected it ... None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. — C.S. Lewis

Reading differently means shifting what we take into our minds because what we read affects how we think and how we feel about ourselves. — Debra Smouse

So we read books just because they make us happy or because they're fun, because they will make us sound smart, because they'll get us into college or a good job ahead of the others? Or should we use them as a practical guide to recognizing dragons? No, they show us that we have a purpose; that we can be useful in the world, and that is our pleasure. Education gives us minds more awake, and a life that is more than just passing time. — Anne E. White

I have read that the Builders made toys that could play chess. Toys, as small as the silver bishop in my hand, that could defeat any player, taking no time to select moves that undid even the best minds amongst their makers. The bishop made a satisfying click when tapped to the board. I beat out a little rhythm, wondering if any point remained in playing a game that toys could own. If we couldn't find a better game then perhaps the mechanical minds the Builders left behind would always win. — Mark Lawrence

Their boredom becomes more and more terrible. They realize that they've been tricked and burn with resentment. Every day of their lives they read the newspapers and went to the movies. Both fed them on lynchings, murder, sex crimes, explosions, wrecks, love nests, fires, miracles, revolutions, war. This daily diet made sophisticates of them. The sun is a joke. Oranges can't titillate their jaded palates. Nothing can ever be violent enough to make taut their slack minds and bodies. They have been cheated and betrayed. They have slaved and saved for nothing. — Nathanael West

Reading develops cognitive skills. It trains our minds to think critically and to question what you are told. This is why dictators censor or ban books. It's why it was illegal to teach slaves to read. It's why girls in developing countries have acid thrown in their faces when they walk to school. — Karin Slaughter

But in those first hours after you take it, your brain is tuned in like nothing you can imagine. Eyes like the Hubble telescope, sensing light that's not even on the spectrum. You might be able to read minds, make time stop, cook pasta that's exactly right every time. — David Wong

It will be a gay world. There will be lights everywhere except in the minds of men, and the fall of the last civilization will not be heard above the din. — Herbert Read

It is with pain that I read of the dire effects of my book upon the minds of young girls. — Mary MacLane

Harry didn't see how he could - yet he sometimes had the horrible feeling that Snape could read minds. — J.K. Rowling

I've had that conversation! "You had a minute! Why didn't you do that?" So if husbands could read our minds that would be great. — Mila Kunis

But in the earlier hours, or so I have read, they still have got their daylight minds. It takes the midnight mind to do the black deed to the black man. — Elizabeth Spencer

Every woman wants and needs different things. It's always best when you're honest and you speak up. It's hard to read minds. — Nina Dobrev

I find I think of myself not as a writer so much as someone who provides a gateway, a tangential route for readers to reach the circus. To visit the circus again, if only in their minds, when they are unable to attend it physically. I relay it through printed words on crumpled newsprint, words that they can read again and again, returning to the circus whenever they wish, regardless of time of day or physical location. Transporting them at will.
When put that way, it sounds rather like magic, doesn't it? — Erin Morgenstern

When my father first took me to Ennis Library I went down among the shelves and felt company, not only the company of writers, but the readers too, because they had lifted and opened and read these books. The books were worn in a way they can only get worn by hands and eyes and minds — Niall Williams

There are all kinds of ignorance in the world. Education, learning to read and write, doesn't necessarily give us knowledge. We have to learn to use our minds to see what is really happening. — Linda Leaming

If we could read minds, we wouldn't need headsets. — Tommy G. Kendrick

You can read minds, and you didn't tell me?" Link stared at me like he just found out I was the Silver Surfer. He rubbed his head nervously. "Hey, man, all that stuff about Lena? I was yankin' your chain." He looked away. "Are you doin' it now? You're doin' it, aren't you? Dude, get out of my head." He backed away from me and into the bookshelf.
"I can't read your mind, you idiot. — Kami Garcia

Myth: Vampires can read minds.
Truth: Geez, I hope not. But it would explain some things about my mom. — Kimberly Pauley

More often than not, you will never be judged by your intentions because the world can't read minds and very few will know the heart of a person they have not given time to know personally. — Shannon L. Alder

Every person has the latent ability to read minds and influence the physical world without touching it, but they don't have the ability to connect with the power source. — Maria V. Snyder

My enemies can soar into the night like invisible demons, conjure wolf creatures from hell, and read minds. On our side is a god that can lead a man to a ferry! — David Gemmell

In the process of terrorizing an article on spring training, Butch glanced over at Marissa again, and V
knew the two were going to take off soon - but not because they were finished with their coffee.
Funny, he knew what was going to happen from extrapolation, not second sight or because he could read their minds: Butch was letting off the bonding scent, and Marissa loved being with her male — J.R. Ward

If we read, we shall renew our minds. — Lailah Gifty Akita

In their rooms, some guests read or made love, but most of them slept, blissfully unaware of the fact that their innkeepers were losing their minds. — Tamara Thorne

Jared and I need to talk this over alone."

"Why?" Ash asked, his voice unexpected in that hushed room, his eyes fastened on Kami. "Why do you need to be alone?" he asked. "You can read each other's minds."

"Thank you for pointing that out; I wasn't aware," Kami told him. "And yes, it would be fantastic to have a silent conversation with all of you looking on. — Sarah Rees Brennan

In my world," said Posy, "authors write stories, and the characters do whatever the author tells them. It's not like this--the characters don't have minds and lives of their own."
"How do you know this?" was Caris' surprising reply. The corner of her mouth turned up in a playful smile. "You do not see the characters when the pages of the book are shut. Is there never a time when you read a book for the second time and you notice something that you didn't remember from the first time? Or hear a story told, and every time it is told it grows and changes in the telling? Change is the nature of everything. — Ashlee Willis

In writing, as in life, its not the big words that are the problem its the little minds that read them. — Rassool Jibraeel Snyman

And the Jedi?" Lyra asked. "Also doing what they can. But remember, Dooku is one of their own, and he's a crafty opponent. At times he seems to be able to read our minds, if not simply outguess us. — James Luceno

He suspected the Archdeacon of not having read them; he was in painful doubt as to what was really thought of them by the leading minds of Brasenose, and bitterly convinced that his old acquaintance Carp had been the writer of that depreciatory recension which was kept locked in a small drawer of Mr. Casaubon's desk, and also in a dark closet of his verbal memory. These were heavy impressions to struggle against, and brought that melancholy embitterment which is the consequence of all excessive claim: even his religious faith wavered with his wavering trust in his own authorship, and the consolations of the Christian hope in immortality seemed to lean on the immortality of the still unwritten Key to all Mythologies. For — George Eliot

And not only did this great consolidated ecclesiasticism assume to lord it over men's earthly treasures, but they lorded it over men's minds, prescribing what men should think and read and write. — George W Truett

Sometime during my study of the Dark Ages and Middle Ages, I uncovered an odd paradox that exists in our minds about time gone by. It is a difference most people don't discern between history and the past. Simply stated, the past is what is real and true, while history is merely what someone recorded. If you don't think there is a difference, experience an event in person and then read about it in the newspaper the next day, after witnesses have been interviewed. It might be shocking for many of us to realize that what we know as "history" can actually be a total fabrication, created from the imagination of someone with an ax to grind. Or perhaps, and it certainly happened in the Middle Ages, history was simply recorded by the man with the sharpest ax. — Andy Andrews

Toxic thoughts leave no room for truth to flourish. And in the absence of truth, lies reign. Spend some time soaking in your favorite verses from Scripture tonight. The more we read God's truths and let truth fill our minds, the less time we'll spend contemplating untruths and toxic thoughts. — Lysa TerKeurst

Women ought to be religious; faith was the natural fragrance of their minds. The more incredible the things they believed, the more lovely was the act of belief. To him the story of "Paradise Lost" was as mythical as the "Odyssey"; yet when his mother read it aloud to him, it was not only beautiful but true. A woman who didn't have holy thoughts about mysterious things far away would be prosaic and commonplace, like a man. — Willa Cather

The big trouble," he added, "is that everyone wants someone else to read their minds for them and then make the world work properly. — Terry Pratchett

No. He says when you're dealing with any kids of supernatural beings, Gods and Devils and angels, you tend to think about them like hurricanes or earthquakes, some kind of mindless force of nature. But if they're real, then they have minds. They know your name. So even reading about the Devil tips him off, he knows instantly he's being read about and that you're somebody he may have to deal with. And I'm thinking what you did in Vegas went way, way beyond that."
"What 'I' did? What about us? We were both there."
"Yeah but I cut my hair since then. They probably think that was a different guy. — David Wong

I've come to believe that we, as people, only tend to remember only certain of what we hear or read just for that reason. Most of what we retain coincide with our personal beliefs and feelings and the rest, we throw away into the back of our minds where we keep it or forget it entirely. — Celia Mcmahon

I really try to think cinematically, because that's how people read. They create a theater in their minds. — Dave Barry

History is opaque. You see what comes out, not the script that produces events, [ ... ] The generator of historical events is different from the events themselves, much as the minds of the gods cannot be read just by witnessing their deeds. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The Founding Father expressed in words for all to read the ideal of Government based upon the dignity of the individual. That ideal previously had existed only in the hearts and minds of men. They produced the timeless documents upon which the Nation is rounded and has grown great. They, recognizing God as the author of individual fights, declared that the purpose of Government is to secure those rights. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Someone has said of books that they are our 'amplest heritages' of thought, and so they are. That doesn't necessarily mean that they must be learned or profound. They are food for the mind and different minds require different foods ; everyone is better for variety. Whatever stimulates the mind feeds it, be it fact, fiction or fable. That is where our responsibility lies ; in knowing what builds good mental blood and brawn, and in dispensing that only. Don't ever let yourself think you haven't time to read. — Mary Virginia Provines

So we do not read the Bible simply to fill our minds, but to change our hearts. We do not read the Bible simply to be informed, but to be conformed to the image of Jesus. We read the Bible to stir our affections: our fear, our hope, our love, our desire, our confidence. We read it until our heart cries out, 'The Lord is good! — Tim Chester

She's so sensitive, she's almost able to read their minds. . .. She becomes them. . .. She has a precise and very special gift, a way of observing and understanding animals that's rare, a sixth sense. . .. It's been this way since she was little." In — Diane Ackerman

Holiness begins in our minds and works out to our actions. This being true, what we allow to enter our minds is critically important.
The television programs we watch, the movies we may attend, the books and magazines we read, the music we listen to, and the conversations we have all affect our minds. — Jerry Bridges

It is impossible to study the works of the great mathematicians, or even those of the lesser, without noticing and distinguishing two opposite tendencies, or rather two entirely different kinds of minds. The one sort are above all preoccupied with logic; to read their works, one is tempted to believe they have advanced only step by step, after the manner of a Vauban who pushes on his trenches against the place besieged, leaving nothing to chance. The other sort are guided by intuition and at the first stroke make quick but sometimes precarious conquests, like bold cavalrymen of the advance guard.
[1913, p210] — Henri Poincare

Amid the American military "surge" in Iraq in 2006, the U.S. commander in chief, General David Petraeus, ordered his senior officers to read Twenty-Seven Articles so that they might gain clues on winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. Presumably skipped over was Lawrence's opening admonition that his advice applied strictly to Bedouin - about 2 percent of the Iraqi population - and that interacting with Arab townspeople "require[s] totally different treatment. — Scott Anderson

If you're going to read minds, start with a simple one. — Richard Peck

I am a tale, I am a book, written in different languages and styles

I can't be read, can't be understood,
neither by me nor the greatest of minds

I am too big, I am too small, to be processed or seen by the naked eye

I am too dim, I am too bright, to appear in the shadows or the sunshine. — Sanober Khan

Why do you think people stopped reading? We read to connect with other minds. But why read when you're busy writing, describing the fine-grained flotsam of your own life. Compulsively recording every morsel you eat, that you're cold, or, I don't know, heartbroken by a football game. An endless stream flowing to an audience of everyone and no one. — Alena Graedon

I must beg very serious persons not to read this. It is not written for them. It is not written for grave people who despise trifles and who always require to be instructed. I only venture to offer this to those who like to be entertained, and whose minds are both young and gay. Only those who are amused by innocent pleasures will read this to the end. — Anatole France

Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. Instant information is not for me. I prefer to search library stacks because when I work to learn something, I remember it. And, Oprah, can you imagine curling up in bed to read a computer? Weeping for Anna Karenina and being terrified by Hannibal Lecter, entering the heart of darkness with Mistah Kurtz, having Holden Caulfield ring you up - some things should happen on soft pages, not cold metal. — Harper Lee

I wish I could read minds. It's a dangerous superpower, so I'd wish for it to come with a switch where I could turn it off if I wanted to. You'd learn a lot about people, that's for sure! — Kelsey Chow

Every day of their lives they read the newspapers and went to the movies. Both fed them on lynchings, murder, sex crimes, explosions, wrecks, love nests, fires, miracles, revolutions, war. This daily diet made sophisticates of them. The sun is a joke. Oranges can't titillate their jaded palates. Nothing can ever be violent enough to make taut their slack minds and bodies. They have been cheated and betrayed. They have slaved and saved for nothing. Tod — Nathanael West

For as the aged, or those whose sight is defective, when any books however fair, is set before them, though they perceive that there is something written are scarcely able to make out two consecutive words, but, when aided by glasses, begin to read distinctly, so Scripture, gathering together the impressions of Deity, which, till then, lay confused in our minds, dissipates the darkness, and shows us the true God clearly. — John Calvin

Great lecturers seldom hesitate to use dramatic tricks to enshrine their precepts in the minds of their audiences, and at Yale perhaps Chauncey B. Tinker was the most noted. To read one of his lectures was like reading a monologue of the great actress Ruth Draper
you missed the main point. You missed the drop in his voice as he approached the death in Rome of the tubercular Keats; you missed the shaking tone in which he described the poet's agony for the absent Fanny with him his love had never been consummated; you missed the grim silence of the end. — Louis Auchincloss

Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I can read minds, but I'm illiterate. — Mitch Hedberg

My afternoon comp class is not persuaded. In fact, they feel ill-treated ... I've read three short essays aloud, anonymously, for the purpose of inspiring discussion or, failing discussion, private misgiving. It's my hope that if the majority of these intellectually addled young folk actually hear their words aloud, if they are forced to digest not only their advice to me but the logic that led to this advice, they will, if not change their minds, at least become acquainted with doubt. — Richard Russo