Date: December 1840

"Perhaps a friendly Morgan le Fay will make Siegfried's castle rise again for me or show my mind's eye what heroic deeds are reserved for his sons of the nineteenth century."

— Engels, Friedrich (1820-1895)

Date: 1841

"It is the solar system of the mind."

— Marx, Karl (1818-1883)

Date: w. btw. April and August, 1844

"Logic -- mind's coin of the realm, the speculative or mental value of man and nature -- its essence which has grown totally indifferent to all real determinateness, and hence unreal -- is alienated thinking, and therefore thinking which abstracts from nature and from real man: abstract thinking."

— Marx, Karl (1818-1883)

Date: December 1843-January 1844

"He freed the body from chains because he enchained the heart."

— Marx, Karl (1818-1883)

Date: December 1843-January 1844

"And once the lightning of thought has squarely struck this ingenuous soil of the people, the emancipation of the Germans into men will be accomplished."

— Marx, Karl (1818-1883)

Date: 1851

When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. It is the same as the pupil, in learning to write, following with his pen the lines that have been pencilled by the teacher."

— Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860)

Date: 1851

"But, in reading, our head is, however, really only the arena of some one else’s thoughts."

— Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860)

Date: 1851

"And so it happens that the person who reads a great deal—that is to say, almost the whole day, and recreates himself by spending the intervals in thoughtless diversion, gradually loses the ability to think for himself; just as a man who is always riding at last forgets how to walk."

— Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860)

Date: 1851

"For to read in every spare moment, and to read constantly, is more paralysing to the mind than constant manual work, which, at any rate, allows one to follow one’s own thoughts."

— Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860)

Date: 1851

"Just as a spring, through the continual pressure of a foreign body, at last loses its elasticity, so does the mind if it has another person’s thoughts continually forced upon it."

— Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860)