Date: 1963

"Every time I tried to concentrate, my mind glided off, like a skater, into a large empty space, and piroutted there, absently."

— Plath, Sylvia (1932-1963)

Date: 1968

"There is a little man who lives in one's head. The little man keeps a library."

— Fodor, Jerry (b. 1935)

Date: 1968

"We might thus consider expanding the population in one's head to include subordinate little men who superintend the execution of the 'elementary' behaviors involved in complex sequences like grasping a shoelace."

— Fodor, Jerry (b. 1935)

Date: 1968

"The shop foreman [in one's head] goes about supervising that activity in a way that is, in essence, a microcosm of supervising tying one's shoe. Indeed the shop foreman might be imagined to superintend a detail of wage slaves, whose functions include: searching inputs for traces of shoelace, fle...

— Fodor, Jerry (b. 1935)

Date: 1968

"Rather the little man stands as a representative pro tem for psychological faculties which mediate the integration of shoe-tying behavior by applying information about how shoes are tied."

— Fodor, Jerry (b. 1935)

Date: 1968

"This is, I think, perfectly correct. The little man [in one's head], as we might say, has in his library pamphlets entitled 'Tying One's Shoes', 'Speaking Latin', and 'Typing 'Afghanistan"', but no pamphlet entitled 'Being Intelligent' or 'Speaking Latin Fluently' or 'Typing "Afghanistan" with P...

— Fodor, Jerry (b. 1935)

Date: 1979

"There's a party in my mind...And it never stops / There's a party up there all the time."

— Byrne, David (b. 1952) and Jerry Harrison (b. 1949) [Talking Heads]

Date: 1980

"The back of the mind is a small hotel / And when the residents go on picnics / Or take buckets and spades down to the sea / The betrayals begin."

— Longley, Michael (b. 1939)

Date: 1984

"Like, I own your brain and what you know, but your thoughts have Swiss citizenship."

— Gibson, William (b. 1948)

Date: 1992

"The mind--considered as intellect and will together--is, if all goes well, supreme in the human soul; but neither intellect nor will is an autocratic emperor; rather, they are joint consuls on the model of the Roman Republic."

— Kenny, Anthony (b. 1931)