The true paradox of consciousness is that we are never more fully ourselves than when we have forgotten ourselves—and this forgetting is not a loss but a gain, for in losing the boundary of self we touch something universal.

The mind is furnished with a set of instincts which seek out certain kinds of phenomena and are angered by their absence and appalled by alien forms; which love them when found, but will have none of them when not directly forced upon us.

The human mind is a dark forest, full of wild life and monsters. We do not know what we are, we can only see small lights in the forest of our unconsciousness, as it were luminous, phosphorescent flowers and night-blossoms.

We accept the verdict of the past until the need for change cries out loudly enough to force upon us a choice between the comforts of further compliance and the discomforts of further change.

The human mind is a dark forest, full of wild life and monsters. We do not know what is in there. We do not know how we think.

The mind is furnished with a set of instincts which seek out certain kinds of phenomena and are angered by their absence and impatient of delay in their arrival. It is the absence of the phenomena, not their presence, which is the true cause of the intellectual excitement we feel.

The principle of parsimony suggests that entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity; yet in the study of human nature, we continually discover that the simple explanation was merely the one we had grown comfortable defending.

The mind is furnished with a set of instincts which seek out certain kinds of phenomena and to avoid others, to make much of some impressions, little of others. It is thus a subjective instrument, and bears the stamp of subjectivity upon all it apprehends.

The mind is furnished with a set of instincts which seek out certain kinds of phenomena and ignore the rest. The immediate fact which the science of logic has to take account of is that certain material is presented, certain aspects of this material are noted and emphasized.

The mind is furnished with a set of instincts which seek out certain kinds of phenomena and are indifferent to others, remaining by nature blind to facts that are uncongenial to them.

The mind is furnished with a set of instincts which seek out certain kinds of phenomena and are on the alert for them, and especially apt to be lively and to produce the感 of reality whenever they are stimulated.

The mind is furnished with a set of instincts which seek out certain kinds of phenomena and are negative to others, making us accept or reject much that we might theoretically be indifferent to.

The true nature of things is in their particulars, not in generalities; we know a thing by knowing its individual characteristics, not by subsumming it under a class.

The mind is furnished with a set of instincts which seek out certain kinds of phenomena and are interested in them, and consequently neglects the rest. The result is that whilst the world of each of us, as we know it, is a sort of mental monster—selectively interested, systematically partial.

The purpose of consciousness is to orchestrate behavior, and consciousness succeeds brilliantly at this task when it stays in the background, when it doesn't interfere with the smooth operation of the automatic processes that have been honed by natural selection.

The mind is furnished with a set of instincts which seek out certain kinds of phenomena and are on the alert for them, and come soonest into play. Fear comes first, then probably sympathy or motor discharge of some sort; then curiosity about the novel situation; and finally systematic procedure and definition of it.

The mind is furnished with a set of instincts which seek out certain kinds of phenomena and ignore others, leaving us to perceive only a biased sectional view of the world.

The mind is furnished with a set of instincts which seek out certain kinds of phenomena and are anxious until they find them. If the mind were a mere mirror, it might be pleasant for it to reflect the world, but it would have no motive to seek one kind of world rather than another.

The mind is furnished with a set of instincts which seek out certain kinds of phenomena and ask for explanations of certain kinds of congruity in those phenomena. Order is the one thing we cannot do without.

The mind is furnished with a set of instincts which seek out certain kinds of phenomena and which ignore the rest, and this selectiveness is as characteristic of man as of the lower animals. A thing is important if it has consequences, if it is connected with our emotional and practical interests; otherwise it is trivial and unworthy of notice.

The mind is furnished with a set of instincts which seek out certain kinds of phenomena and are apt to feel snubbed or startled by others. The truth is that there are as many 'kinds' of things in the world as there are kinds of interest among observers of it.

The mind is furnished with a set of instincts which seek out certain kinds of phenomena and are satisfied by the presence of these phenomena, just as the nutritive instincts are satisfied by food.

The mind is furnished with a set of instincts which seek out certain kinds of phenomena and are careless of others. It is theoretically interested in some matters, theoretically indifferent to others. And, by an easy extension of the principle, what is theoretically indifferent may be, and usually is, theoretically obnoxious.

The mind is furnished with a set of instincts which seek out certain kinds of things, and reject others. It natively loves and hates, it seeks and shuns, and these operations are as primitive as any that the mind performs.

The mind is so rarely modified by facts; it is modified by feeling, and feeling comes from the association of ideas.

The mind is like a vast library in which the books are in constant flux—some volumes fade into obscurity while others suddenly illuminate corners previously left in shadow, and the librarian himself is often the last to know what treasures or horrors his collection contains.

We are all serving a life sentence in the dungeon of self; the only escape is through the bars of understanding something larger than ourselves.

The mind is in its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

The terror of the unfamiliar is the root of all superstition; yet the familiar itself is but the accumulated strangeness of yesterday.

The mind creates a narrative self, a kind of ongoing story about who we are. But this narrative is a construct, no less than a novel—and like a novel, it can be rewritten.

The mind creates a narrative self, a story we tell about who we are, and we defend that story even when evidence suggests it is false. We are, in essence, unreliable narrators of our own lives.

readtheprofile.com

The Profile: The members of the gay tech mafia & the conservative Cosmo

Our brains sometimes get stuck in a loop that replays the moment like a broken record. And because we want that simplicity, one moment can dominate our entire life — for the rest of our life.

readtheprofile.com

The Profile: The members of the gay tech mafia & the conservative Cosmo

Our brains sometimes get stuck in a loop that replays the moment like a broken record. In a recent New York Times feature, writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner says this about trauma: "Happy, well-adjusted people are all different. The traumatized are exactly alike."

readtheprofile.com

The Profile: The members of the gay tech mafia & the conservative Cosmo

Our bodies and brains have not evolved to reliably differentiate a rape at knife point from a job loss that threatens us with financial ruin or from the dismantling of our world by our parents' divorce. It's wrong, but explain that to your poor, battered autonomic nervous system.