Date: 1971, 1979

"Thinking is trying to better one's instructions; it is trying out promissory tracks which will exist, if they ever do exist, only after one has stumbled exploringly over ground where they are not."

— Ryle, Gilbert (1900-1976)

Date: 1996

"One would expect, then, that such a political period would be rife with various veins of pseudo-mysticism, enamoured of whatever gives the slip to the concept, enthralled by those spasms of mind which confound its customary distinctions, which breed in us some ecstatic state of indeterminacy in ...

— Eagleton, Terry (b. 1943)

Date: 2006

"In power mindfulness, the mind is like a megawatt searchlight, enabling you to see so much deeper into what you are gazing at."

— Ajahn Brahm [born Peter Betts] (August 7, 1951)

Date: 2006

"When there is no longer any wobble, then the mind is like an unwavering rock, more immovable than a mountain and harder than a diamond."

— Ajahn Brahm [born Peter Betts] (August 7, 1951)

Date: March 24, 2011

"It is like finding that cheese depends on chalk--that soul depends on matter."

— McGinn, Colin (b. 1950)

Date: March 24, 2011

"It [neurology] has all the fascination of a horror story--the Jekyll of the mind bound for life to the Hyde of the brain."

— McGinn, Colin (b. 1950)

Date: December 11, 2011

"The idea that down in our foundations there lie grubby creatures like desires, or passions, or needs, or culture, is like some nightmarish madwoman in the attic, and induces the same kind of reaction that met Darwin when he too drew attention to our proximity to animals rather than to angels."

— Blackburn, Simon (b. 1944)

Date: September 17, 2012

"Our modern skulls house a Stone Age mind."

— Gottlieb, Anthony

Date: September 17, 2012

"This mind is regarded as a set of software modules that were written by natural selection and now constitute a universal human nature. We are, in short, all running apps from Fred Flintstone's not-very-smartphone."

— Gottlieb, Anthony

Date: July 21, 2014

"Perhaps because Harry's life, on the page and, even more luridly, onscreen, was measured out in highlights, as the plot demanded, whereas Mason is revealed in a string of lowlights, or in those episodes which seem dim and dull at the time, and only later shine in memory's cave."

— Lane, Anthony (b. 1962)