482 Mindset Quotes

A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things but cannot receive great ones.

It is very important to generate a good attitude, a good heart, as much as possible. From this, happiness in both the short term and the long term for both yourself and others will come.

I've always believed in experiencing everything in life. When you walk out with blinders on, you cut yourself off from the angels and the fairies.

I don't take the movies seriously, and anyone who does is in for a headache.

I've been lucky. I'll be lucky again.

The turning point in my career came with the realization that Black should play to win instead of just steering for equality.

Do not deny the classical approach, simply as a reaction, or you will have created another pattern and trapped yourself there.

Faith is a state of mind that can be conditioned through self-discipline. Faith will accomplish.

The spirit of the individual is determined by his dominating thought habits.

Life is wide, limitless. There is no border, no frontier.

Know the difference between a catastrophe and an inconvenience. - To realize that it's just an inconvenience, that it is not a catastrophe, but just an unpleasantness, is part of coming into your own, part of waking up.

In combat, spontaneity rules; rote performance of technique perishes.

It is true that the mental aspect of kung-fu is the desired end; however, to achieve this end, technical skill must come first.

The idea is that flowing water never goes stale, so just keep on flowing.

The mind is like a fertile garden in which anything that is planted, flowers or weeds, will grow.

The possession of anything begins in the mind.

If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think.

There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.

An unbending and absolute acceptance of any idea is a sure sign of a small mind, no matter the greatness of intellect possesed by the one accepting that idea.

An individual's self-concept is the core of his personality. It affects every aspect of human behavior: the ability to learn, the capacity to grow and change. A strong, positive self-image is the best possible preparation for success in life.

Freedom begins between the ears.

The things we hate about ourselves aren't more real than things we like about ourselves.

An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.

The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.

To some, freedom means the opportunity to do what they want to do; to most it means not to do what they do not want to do. It is perhaps true that those who can grow will feel free under any condition.

You must try to generate happiness within yourself. If you aren't happy in one place, chances are you won't be happy anyplace.

Mortal danger is an effective antidote for fixed ideas.

The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.

Youth is a quality, not a matter of circumstances.

Rather than continuing to seek the truth, simply let go of your views.

Life is too short to have anything but delusional notions about yourself.

Man is free; but not unless he believes he is[.]

Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right. (See: If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right.)

I understand that fear is my friend, but not always. Never turn your back on fear. It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed.

As to the history of the revolution, my ideas may be peculiar, perhaps singular. What do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected from 1760 - 1775, in the course of fifteen years, before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington.

What do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments, of their duties and obligations... This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people was the real American Revolution.

There is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

Focused on our good, focused on our abundance we naturally attract more of the same. This is spiritual law. Our consciousness is creative. What we focus on, we empower and enlarge. Good multiplies when focused upon. Negativity multiplies when focused upon. The choice is ours: Which do we want more of?

I must work on my mind. For now I realise: Everyone of us has a heaven inside.

'The future masters of technology will have to be light-hearted and intelligent. The machine easily masters the grim and the dumb.' (1969)

If you do not look at things on a large scale it will be difficult for you to master strategy. If you learn and attain this strategy you will never lose even to twenty or thirty enemies. More than anything to start with you must set your heart on strategy and earnestly stick to the Way. You will come to be able to actually beat men in fights, and to be able to win with your eye. Also by training you will be able to freely control your own body, conquer men with your body, and with sufficient training you will be able to beat ten men with your spirit.

The gaze should be large and broad. This is the twofold gaze 'Perception and Sight'. Perception is strong and sight weak. In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things. It is important in strategy to know the enemy's sword and not to be distracted by insignificant movements of his sword. You must study this. The gaze is the same for single combat and for large-scale combat.

Generally, I dislike fixedness in both long swords and hands. Fixedness means a dead hand. Pliability is a living hand. You must bear this in mind.

What I learned at a very early age was that I was responsible for my life. And as I became more spiritually conscious, I learned that we all are responsible for ourselves, that you create your own reality by the way you think and therefore act. You cannot blame apartheid, your parents, your circumstances, because you are not your circumstances. You are your possibilities. If you know that, you can do anything.

In [his] mind, madness. Thousands of competing contradictory impossible visions that make no sense all because they can't all fit together but they do fit together, he makes them fit together, this way today, that way tomorrow, as they're needed. As if he can make a new idea-machine inside his head for every new problem he faces. As if he conceives of a new universe to live in, every hour a new one, often hopelessly wrong and he ends up making mistakes and bad judgments, but sometimes so perfectly right that it opens things up like a miracle and I look through his eyes and see the world his new way and it changes everything. Madness, and then illumination. We knew everything there was to know before... Now we discover that there are so many ways of knowing the same things that we'll never find them all.

Fear not the future, weep not for the past.

Convince yourself that everything is alright. 'Cos it already is. ~ 'For Nancy ('Cos It Already Is)'

'My stories run up and bite me in the leg- I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.'

I can only say that whatever my life and work have been, I'm not envious of anyone- and this is my biggest satisfaction.

How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?

It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light. First, believe in this world -- that there is meaning behind everything. Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil, think that you are not understanding it in the right light. throw the burden on yourselves!

Fear is death, fear is sin, fear is hell, fear is unrighteousness, fear is wrong life. All the negative thoughts and ideas that are in the world have proceeded from this evil spirit of fear.

It is better to be high-spirited even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all to prudent.

Even Hitler didn't wake up going, 'let me do the most evil thing I can do today.' I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was 'good.' Stuff like that just needs reprogramming. ... I wake up every day full of hope, positive that every day is going to be better than yesterday. And I'm looking to infect people with my positivity. I think I can start an epidemic.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude.

I am not one of those weak-spirited, sappy Americans who want to be liked by all the people around them.I don't care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it. My affections, being concentrated over a few people, are not spread all over Hell in a vile attempt to placate sulky, worthless shits.

Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough.

The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a person's determination.

Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front -

To affirm life is to deepen, to make more inward, and to exalt the will to live.

A man's mind will very generally refuse to make itself up until it be driven and compelled by emergency.

Hope is a waking dream.

Possession of anything begins in the mind.

What IS is more important than WHAT SHOULD BE. To many people are looking at 'what is' from a position of thinking 'what should be.'

I'm a moron because I don't want to lie in a gutter puking over myself...yeah right.

Funny is an attitude.

Freedom is from within.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.

'Everyting negative - pressure, challenges - is all an opportunity for me to rise.' - Kobe Bryant[4]

Put yourself in a different room, that's what the mind is for.

Whatever you fear most has no power- it is your fear that has the power.

Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances...Strong men believe in cause and effect.

If you don't have a hammer, you don't want anything to look like a nail.

You are WHAT you are, You are WHERE you are, because of what you put in your mind. You can CHANGE what you are, You can CHANGE where you are, by changing what you put in your mind.

Go with the flow..

Religion does not mean just precepts, a temple, monastery, or other external signs, for these as well as hearing and thinking are subsidiary factors in taming the mind. When the mind becomes the practices, one is a practitioner of religion, and when the mind does not become the practices one is not.

Though it is folly to suppose that happiness is a matter of volition, and that we can make ourselves content and cheerful whenever we choose - a theory that many poor hypochondriacs are taunted with till they are nigh driven mad - yet, on the other hand, no sane mind is ever left without the power of self-discipline and self-control in a measure, which measure increases in proportion as it is exercised. ~ Ch. 10

It is not the facts and events that upset man, but the view he takes of them.

Free your mind, and the ass will follow

Caelum, non animum mutant, qui trans mare currunt.

The world is your kaleidoscope, and the varying combinations of colours, which at every succeeding moment it presents to you are the exquisitely adjusted pictures of your ever-moving thoughts. So you will be, what you 'will' to be. Let failure find its false content, In that poor word 'environment,' But spirit scorns it and is free.

Dream as big as you want it's the cheapest thing you'll ever do

If you find yourself lost in the woods, fuck it!, build a house. Well, I was lost but now I live here. I have severely improved my predicament.

There are only two mantras... yum and yuk. Mine is yum.'

...she recreated the mountains not as she had originally seen them but as she eventually chose to perceive them, not only a capacity to observe the world but a capacity to alter his or her observation of it---which, in the end, is the capacity to alter the world, itself. Those people who recognise that imagination is reality's master, we call 'sages,' and those who act upon it, we call 'artists.'

Einstein was a giant. His head was in the clouds, but his feet were on the ground. Those of us who are not so tall have to choose!

So variously seem'd all things wrought, I marvell'd how the mind was brought To anchor by one gloomy thought; And wherefore rather I made choice To commune with that barren voice, Than him that said, 'Rejoice! rejoice!'

Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives.

Nothing has any power over me other than that which I give it through conscious thoughts.

The past doesn't equal the future.

I was educated once, and it took me years to get over it.

Every time I close the door on reality, it comes in through the window.