A mind cannot possibly consider anything beyond what it can measure or calculate; without a body it can only consider itself. Without the interruptions of hellos from the eye, ear, tongue, nose, and finger, the evolving mind huddles in the corner picking its navel.

The hand is the cutting edge of the mind. Civilisation is not a collection of finished artefacts, it is the elaboration of processes. In the end, the march of man is the refinement of the hand in action.

The unassisted hand and the understanding left to itself possess but little power. Effects are produced by the means of instruments and helps, which the understanding requires no less than the hand; and as instruments either promote or regulate the motion of the hand, so those that are applied to the mind prompt or protect the understanding.

the eye were no more than sense organs. The brain was no more than a central switchboard, encased in bone and removed from the working surface of the body. It was the hands that were the working surface, the hands that felt and manipulated the universe. Human beings thought with their hands. It was their hands that were the answer of curiosity, that felt and pinched and turned and lifted and hefted. There were animals that had brains of respectable size, but they had no hands and that made all the difference.

My hand tells me what I’m thinking.

"Mind" is a tool invented by the universe to see itself; but it can never see all of itself, for much the same reason that you can’t see your own back (without mirrors).

Your mind is the most dangerous and divine thing you will ever touch. It can trap you in a story you never agreed to or hand you a future no one in your bloodline has ever seen. It can turn tiny worries into hurricanes or make impossible dreams feel inevitable. The moment you make peace with your mind, your life's background music changes tune. Fear shrinks. Vision expands. Decisions sharpen. The world stops feeling overwhelming and starts feeling negotiable. Master your mind and the rest of your life will look suspiciously like magic.

My left hand is my thinking hand. The right is only a motor hand. This holds the hammer. The left hand, the thinking hand, must be relaxed, sensitive. The rhythms of thought pass through the fingers and grip of this hand into the stone. It is also a listening hand. It listens for basic weaknesses or flaws in the stone; for the possibility or imminence of fractures.

Symbols are to the mind what tools are to the hand—an extended application of its powers.

Mind is the Master power that moulds and makes, And Man is Mind, and evermore he takes The tool of Thought, and, shaping what he wills, Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills: — He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass: Environment is but his looking-glass.

The body itself, simply from the laws of its own nature, can do many things which its mind wonders at … it is in the mind’s power alone both to speak and to be silent and to do many other things which they therefore believe depend on the mind’s decision … if, on the other hand, the body is inactive, the mind is at the same time incapable of thinking

The mind commands the body, and obedience is instant; the mind commands itself and meets resistance. The mind tells the hand to move, and all goes so smoothly that it is hard to distinguish the command from its execution. Yet the mind is the mind, and the hand is a body. The mind tells the mind to will; one is the same as the other, and yet it does not do what it is told.

The mind commands the body and is instantly obeyed. The mind commands itself and meets resistance. The mind commands the hand to move, and it so easy that one hardly distinguishes the order from its execution. Yet mind is mind and hand is body. The mind orders the mind to will. The recipient of the order is itself, yet it does not perform it.

Unless we can explain the mind in terms of things that have no thoughts or feelings of their own, we'll only have gone around in a circle.