Quotes & Sayings About Reading People's Minds

And so the question becomes, what you do in the meantime? And you go - if you're forever on the move, especially in the life of the mind; forever reading veraciously, writing, speaking, lecturing, trying to unsettle minds, trying to touch souls, trying to encourage and inspire, on the one hand, but also trying to unhouse and unnerve people, so that they have to reexamine themselves, society and the world on the others. There's tremendous joy in it. — Cornel West

They write for people who read with the surface of their minds, people with reading habits that make the smallest demands on them, people brought up reading for facts, who know what's going to come next and want to know what's coming next, and get angry at surprises. — William Gaddis

Do you know why people are reading more books now than ever before? Because the terrific catastrophe of the war has made them realize that their minds are ill. The world was suffering from all sorts of mental fevers and aches and disorders, and never knew it. Now our mental pangs are only too manifest. We are all reading, hungrily, hastily, trying to find out - after the trouble is over - what was the matter with our minds. — Christopher Morley

Now, 75 years [after To Kill a Mockingbird], in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books.
[Open Letter, O Magazine, July 2006] — Harper Lee

God, the bitter misery that reading works into this world! Everybody knows that - everbody who IS everybody. All the best minds have been off reading for years. Look at the swing La Rouchefoucauld took at it. He said that if nobody had ever learned to read, very few people would be in love. Good for you, La Rouchefoucauld; nice going, boy. I wish I'd never learned to read. — Dorothy Parker

People are often wary of reading or watching anything in the horror genre because in their minds, it's just senseless gore, death and violence. Well, I can tell you from avid experience, that's not what horror is about. The horror genre teaches us that sometimes really bad things happen to really good people, but that hope always prevails in even the darkest of situations. That's a very important lesson, no matter how frightening you think the teacher is, and to be in the top of her class, all you need to do is to go in with an open mind. — Rebecca McNutt

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

Weak minds may be injured by novel-reading; but sensible people find both amusement and instruction therein. — Henry Ward Beecher

Take space. It has to be either finite or infinite, yet neither possibility sits well with our intuitions. When I try to imagine a finite universe, I get Marcel Marceau miming on an invisible wall with his hands. Or, after reading about manifolds in books on physics, I see ants creeping over a sphere, or people trapped in a huge inner tube unaware of all the exposure around them. But in all these cases the volume is stubbornly suspended in a larger space, which shouldn't be there at all, but which my minds eye can't help but peek at. — Steven Pinker

I am convinced there are genuine and valid levels of perception available with cannabis (and probably with other drugs) which are, through the defects of our society and our educational system, unavailable to us without such drugs. Such a remark applies not only to self-awareness and to intellectual pursuits, but also to perceptions of real people, a vastly enhanced sensitivity to facial expression, intonations, and choice of words which sometimes yields a rapport so close it's as if two people are reading each other's minds. — Carl Sagan

There are lots of superheroes with different superpowers, and some of them are big and flashy, like super strength and super speed, and molecular restructuring, and force fields. But these abilities are really not so different from the superpower stuff that old Jiko could do, like moving superslow, or reading people's minds, or appearing in doorways, or making people feel okay about themselves by just being there. — Ruth Ozeki

In reading The History of Nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities, their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first. — Charles Mackay

Reading will put you into the minds and hearts of others. It might help you understand why other people do what they do sometimes. — Scott Simon

But it's well known that reading makes people impudent, and tomorrow's world is going to need some people who aren't shy to speak their minds, don't you think? — Nina George

Okay. Oh-kay.
Re-cap. He just had a man come in his mouth. He liked it. He may be embarking on anal sex, soon, if he was reading the subtext right.
Options: stay or leave.
Pros of staying: first experience with anal sex.
Cons of staying: first experience with anal sex.
No, no. That isn't right.
Pros of staying: first experience with anal sex.
Cons of staying: not being able to face Pete the next day. Maybe ever.
The thing about sex, though, as Ryan is discovering, is that it's a goddamn persuasive motivator. It fucks with people's minds. — Dominique Frost

Life is limited, but by writing, and reading, we can live in different worlds, get inside the skins and minds of other people, and, in this way, push out the boundaries of our own lifes. — Joan Lingard

Higher intelligence is not necessarily something you're born with or genetically predisposed toward. In fact, most instances of above-the-ordinary intelligences are usually acquired thru superior learning techniques ... Reading about the greatest minds in history, including recent history, more often than not reveals the individuals concerned (or people close to them) employed specific learning methods. — James Morcan

Every man waits his destined hour; even the cities are doomed to their fate. Let us spend our leisure with our books, which will take our minds off these troubles, and will teach us to despise what many people desire....sometimes I am free for reading, free from all care about public affairs...I live free as much as I can

-Freedom here has nothing to do with political libertyir a notion of rights or the licence to say whatever [Poggio] wished or the ability to go wherever [Poggio] chose. It is rather the experience of withdrawing inwardly from the press of the world - and ensphering himself in a space apart. — Poggio Bracciolini

Reading is poor man's way of travelling not just around the world but into the minds of people. — Anonymous

Literature is a way in which we can learn to live deeper lives
husband with wife, parent with child, brother with sister, fellow member with fellow member. Most good authors are better than we are. They are much better company than our own friends.
What comes from good company? What comes from good company is better manners, greater sensitivity, greater sensibility, greater empathy, great sympathy. Reading good literature makes us more capable of understanding other people, of loving other people, those whom we don't particularly want to love, even our enemies, as well as those closest to us. How can we expect to have full marriages when we are not going into those marriages with full minds and fine sensibilities? We are ignoring the tremendous possibilities of a delicate, well-poised, rich, sensitive life if we ignore the literature of the past. There is no substitute. — Arthur Henry King

No ... it never takes your breath away, telling you things you already know, laying everything out flat, as though the terms and the time, and the nature and the movement of everything were secrets of the same magnitude. They write for people who read with the surface of their minds, people with reading habits that make the smallest demands of them, people brought up reading for facts, who know what's going to come next and want to know what's coming next, and get angry at surprises. Clarity's essential, and detail, no fake mysticism, the facts are bad enough. But we're embarrassed for people who tell too much, and tell it without surprise. How does he know what happened, unless it's one unshaven man alone in a boat, changing I to he, and how often do you get a man alone in a boat, in all this ... all this ... — William Gaddis

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

If I had the opportunity to say a fine word to all the young people of America, it would be this: Don't think too much about yourselves. Try to cultivate the habit of thinking of others; this will reward you. Nourish your minds by good reading, constant reading. Discover what your lifework is, work in which you can do most good, in which you can be happiest. Be unafraid in all things when you know you are in the right. — Charles William Eliot

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

These religious types were the fans that Jesus seems to have the most trouble with. Fans who will walk into a restaurant and bow their heads to pray before a meal just in case someone is watching. Fans who won't go to R-rated movies at the theater, but have a number of them saved on their DVR at home. Fans who may feed the hungry and help the needy, and then they make sure they work it into every conversation for the next two weeks. Fans who make sure people see them put in their offering at church, but they haven't considered reaching out to their neighbor who lost a job and can't pay the bills. Fans who like seeing other people fail because in their minds it makes them look better. Fans whose primary concern in raising their children is what other people think. Fans who are reading this and assuming I'm describing someone else. Fans who have worn the mask for so long they have fooled even themselves. — Kyle Idleman

Now I will be anything else you please, except dull. You may say I have been dull already? As I am an honest woman, I don't agree with you. There are some people who bring dull minds to their reading - and them blame the writer for it. I say no more. — Wilkie Collins

He's stopped reading The Great Minds of Western Philosophy completely, and spend all his time programming, which really is his superpower. I mean, there are lots of superheroes with different superpowers, and some of them are big and flashy, like superstrength, and superspeed, and molecular restructuring, and force fields. But these abilities are really not so different from the superpower stuff that old Jiko could do, like moving superslow, or reading people's minds, or appearing in doorways, or making people feel okay about themselves just by being there. — Ruth Ozeki

In stories, when someone behaves uncharacteristically, we take it as a meaningful, even pivotal moment. If we are surprised again and again, we have to keep changing our minds, or give up and disbelieve the writer. In real life, if people think they know you well enough not only to say, 'It's Tuesday, Amy must be helping out at the library today,' but well enough to say to the librarian, after you've left the building, 'You know, Amy just loves reading to the four-year-olds, I think it's been such a comfort for her since her little boy died' - if they know you like that, you can do almost anything where they can't see you, and when they hear about it, they will, as we do, simply disbelieve the narrator. — Amy Bloom

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