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Success Quote by John Harvey Kellogg

"I believe in the unconscious state of the mind in death"

About this Quote

Kellogg’s line is doing a lot of work with a deceptively clinical calm. “I believe” frames death not as theology but as a personal doctrine, the sort of private certainty that can be smuggled into public life as “common sense.” Then comes the key move: “the unconscious state of the mind.” Not the soul, not judgment, not reunion - a medicalized, almost anesthetic description that treats death as a shutoff switch. For a businessman who built an empire adjacent to health reform and bodily discipline, this phrasing reads like a brand extension: mortality as physiology, not metaphysics.

The intent feels less like comfort than control. If death is unconsciousness, the moral drama migrates entirely into the present body: what you eat, how you sleep, what you abstain from. The subtext is a kind of hygienic materialism that can coexist with moral fervor. You don’t need an afterlife to justify strict rules; you only need a worldview where the body is the battleground and “mind” is a function that can be managed, improved, silenced.

Context matters because Kellogg sat at the crossroads of late-19th and early-20th century reform culture: sanitariums, self-optimization, and a rising confidence in scientific language as moral authority. His sentence borrows that authority. It also quietly dodges the existential mess: death becomes a state, not an event; unconsciousness, not loss. The chill of it is the point. It’s a statement that makes mortality sound like a protocol.

Quote Details

TopicMortality
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APA Style (7th ed.)
Kellogg, John Harvey. (2026, January 16). I believe in the unconscious state of the mind in death. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-believe-in-the-unconscious-state-of-the-mind-in-114157/

Chicago Style
Kellogg, John Harvey. "I believe in the unconscious state of the mind in death." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-believe-in-the-unconscious-state-of-the-mind-in-114157/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I believe in the unconscious state of the mind in death." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-believe-in-the-unconscious-state-of-the-mind-in-114157/. Accessed 5 Feb. 2026.

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Belief in the Unconscious Mind in Death - John Harvey Kellogg
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John Harvey Kellogg (February 26, 1852 - December 14, 1943) was a Businessman from USA.

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