Sourced

• Whatever an enemy might do to an enemy, or a foe to a foe, the ill-directed mind can do to you even worse.
  Whatever a mother, father or other kinsman might do for you, the well-directed mind can do for you even better.
  • Gautama Buddha, Cittavagga The Mind

• The mind is the clear (transparent or translucent) faculty of knowing to which things can appear and be ascertained. The primordial mind is pure. It is empty of itself, of inherent existence. This is our Buddha nature. This is our Bodhi mind. It is one thing to have clarity, it is another to use it.
  • Ross Moore teaching at Tara Institute, Melbourne. Nov.2004

• If the mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few.
  • Suzuki, Shunryu, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind; p. 21.

• The mind within the senses does not dwell, It has no place in outer things, like form, And in between, the mind does not abide;
  Not out, not in, not elsewhere can the mind be found.
  Something not within the body, and yet nowhere else, That does not merge with it nor stand apart—
  Something such as this does not exist, not even slightly. Beings have nirvana in their nature.
  • Shantideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva (Bodhicharyavatara), Chapter 9 verse 102--103, Shambala Publications ISBN 1-57062-253-1

• Mind is mysterious and has myriad appearances. It cannot be identified in the way external objects can. It has no shape, form or colour. This mere clear awareness is of the nature of experience and feeling. It is something like colored water—although the water is not of the same nature as the color, so long as they are mixed, the true color of the water is not obvious. Similarly, the mind does not have the nature of external objects such as physical form, and so forth. However the mind is so habituated to following the five sensory consciousnesses that it becomes almost indistinguishable from the physical form, shape, color and so forth, that it experiences.
  • Dalai Lama, Stages of Meditation, p. 144.

• Nothing exists outside Mind. Everything that appears in your thoughts is Mind itself. This Mind is all pervading. All dharmas, all things, all phenomenon—all are nothing but Mind.
  • Dennis Genpo Merzel, ‘Beyond Sanity and Madness.” Page 145.

• That which possesses discriminating awareness, that which possesses a sense of duality—which grasps or rejects something external—that is mind. Fundamentally it is that which can associate with an ‘other’—with a ‘something’, that is perceived as different from the perceiver.
  • Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche, ‘The Heart of the Buddha’ [Boston; Shambala, 1991], p. 23

• The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore so it eats it! (It's rather like getting tenure.)
  • Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained (1991), p. 177

Unsourced

• Your mind is like a parachute, it works better when its open.
  • Anonymous

• A mind that moves too swiftly cannot pause to think.
  • Simon May, English philosopher

• The brain is as strong as its weakest think.
  • Eleanor Doan

• If every thought that passes through our mind could be seen as a mere biological process, and the biological processing be rendered as mere chemical reactions, and the chemistry be seen as mere physics, does it mean that the essence of who we are is merely a state of involuntary existence? Or maybe our mind simply acts as the marionette of the soul?
  • Richard van der Merwe