Brain Quotes

“I'm convinced that responsibility is some kind of psychological disease.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia

“Your mind will serve you better than any trinket under the suns...It is a weapon...and like any weapon, you need practice to be any good at wielding it.”
― Jay Kristoff, Nevernight

“I don't believe that consciousness is generated by the brain. I believe that the brain is more of a reciever of consciousness.”
― Graham Hancock

“She has man's brain--a brain that a man should have were he much gifted--and woman's heart. The good God fashioned her for a purpose, believe me when He made that so good combination.”
― Bram Stoker, Dracula

“Any man could, if he were so inclined, be the sculptor of his own brain.”
― Santiago Ramon y Cajal, Advice for a Young Investigator

“Whenever I think of something but can't think of what it was I was thinking of, I can't stop thinking until I think I'm thinking of it again. I think I think too much.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“No need to be afraid. I’m just a Holon.”
“Huh?”
“A Holon. What are you?”
“You mean who am I?” I correct him.
“No, what are you?”
“I’m not a what. I’m a who.”
“How can you be a who if you’re not a what?”
“What?”
― Robyn Mundell, Brainwalker

“The exaggerated dopamine sensitivity of the introvert leads one to believe that when in public, introverts, regardless of its validity, often feel to be the center of (unwanted) attention hence rarely craving attention. Extroverts, on the other hand, seem to never get enough attention. So on the flip side it seems as though the introvert is in a sense very external and the extrovert is in a sense very internal - the introvert constantly feels too much 'outerness' while the extrovert doesn't feel enough 'outerness'.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“The lizard brain is hungry, scared, angry, and horny.

The lizard brain only wants to eat and be safe.

The lizard brain will fight (to the death) if it has to, but would rather run away. It likes a vendetta and has no trouble getting angry.

The lizard brain cares what everyone else thinks, because status in the tribe is essential to its survival.

A squirrel runs around looking for nuts, hiding from foxes, listening for predators, and watching for other squirrels. The squirrel does this because that's all it can do. All the squirrel has is a lizard brain.

The only correct answer to 'Why did the chicken cross the road?' is 'Because it's lizard brain told it to.' Wild animals are wild because the only brain they posses is a lizard brain.

The lizard brain is not merely a concept. It's real, and it's living on the top of your spine, fighting for your survival. But, of course, survival and success are not the same thing.

The lizard brain is the reason you're afraid, the reason you don't do all the art you can, the reason you don't ship when you can. The lizard brain is the source of the resistance.”
― Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

“A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle

“If we put the sterile mechanism of our brain on hold, we can view an ocean of enticing eye-opening perspectives. Life offers us an array of choices allowing us to discover a spray of overpowering colors, and hear overwhelming new sounds, and smell the intense fragrances of nature. ("The final decision" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Your own brain ought to have the decency to be on your side!”
― Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith

“When we start raising different inconsistent truths, life may tip into bewilderment and the brain may go haywire. The confrontation between what is, not is, and maybe is, might embed an enduring showdown, harboring an intense apprehension, and bring us sometimes unwittingly to our knees ("The hidden sides of his character" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“When the mind remains the ally of our heart, and the gut is the brain's brother-at-arms, we can tackle the challenging situations, be inspirational appeasers, and stay honest to a fault. If we want to satisfy our quest for the 'real moment,' we must be honest with ourselves and honest to the others and ready to reconcile all intricate contentions. ("Quest for the real moment")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“You can deal with the brain, as I say; it looks sensible, whereas the heart, the human heart, I'm afraid, looks a fucking mess.”
― Julian Barnes, A History of the World in 10½ Chapters

“The Net’s interactivity gives us powerful new tools for finding information, expressing ourselves, and conversing with others. It also turns us into lab rats constantly pressing levers to get tiny pellets of social or intellectual nourishment.”
― Nicholas G. Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

“The distinction between diseases of "brain" and "mind," between "neurological" problems and "psychological" or "psychiatric" ones, is an unfortunate cultural inheritance that permeates society and medicine. It reflects a basic ignorance of the relation between brain and mind. Diseases of the brain are seen as tragedies visited on people who cannot be blamed for their condition, while diseases of the mind, especially those that affect conduct and emotion, are seen as social inconveniences for which sufferers have much to answer. Individuals are to be blamed for their character flaws, defective emotional modulation, and so on; lack of willpower is supposed to be the primary problem.”
― António R. Damásio, Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain

“Dominion does not mean domination. We hold dominion over animals only because of our powerful and ubiquitous intellect. Not because we are morally superior. Not because we have a "right" to exploit those who cannot defend themselves. Let us use our brain to move toward compassion and away from cruelty, to feel empathy rather than cold indifference, to feel animals' pain in our hearts.”
― Marc Bekoff, Animals Matter: A Biologist Explains Why We Should Treat Animals with Compassion and Respect

“The supposedly immaterial soul, we now know, can be bisected with a knife, altered by chemicals, started or stopped by electricity, and extinguished by a sharp blow or by insufficient oxygen.”
― Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works

“When our body decides to get into the action before our brain consents, we must ask who calls the shots. Are we still in control of ourselves, or are we still trustworthy? We have to summon ourselves, question what might be wrong, and challenge the soul-searching subcurrent of our inner self. (“The infinite Wisdom of Meditation“)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”
― Nicholas G. Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

“We become, neurologically, what we think."(33)”
― Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

“Instead of reality being passively recorded by the brain, it is actively constructed by it.”
― David Eagleman, Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain

“This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man's brains out of his hair. That is my job.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“A few nights later, I secretly hope that I might be a genius. Why else can no amount of sleeping pills fell my brain? But in the morning my daughter asks me what a cloud is and I cannot say.”
― Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation

“A brain was only capable of what it could conceive, and it couldn't conceive what it had never experienced”
― Graham Greene, Brighton Rock

“The level of intelligence has been tremendously increased, because people are thinking and communicating in terms of screens, and not in lettered books. Much of the real action is taking place in what is called cyberspace. People have learned how to boot up, activate, and transmit their brains.

Essentially, there’s a universe inside your brain. The number of connections possible inside your brain is limitless. And as people have learned to have more managerial and direct creative access to their brains, they have also developed matrices or networks of people that communicate electronically. There are direct brain/computer link-ups. You can just jack yourself in and pilot your brain around in cyberspace-electronic space.”
― Timothy Leary, Chaos & Cyber Culture

“What is human memory?" Manning asked. He gazed at the air as he spoke, as if lecturing an invisible audience - as perhaps he was. "It certainly is not a passive recording mechanism, like a digital disc or a tape. It is more like a story-telling machine. Sensory information is broken down into shards of perception, which are broken down again to be stored as memory fragments. And at night, as the body rests, these fragments are brought out from storage, reassembled and replayed. Each run-through etches them deeper into the brain's neural structure. And each time a memory is rehearsed or recalled it is elaborated. We may add a little, lose a little, tinker with the logic, fill in sections that have faded, perhaps even conflate disparate events.

"In extreme cases, we refer to this as confabulation. The brain creates and recreates the past, producing, in the end, a version of events that may bear little resemblance to what actually occurred. To first order, I believe it's true to say that everything I remember is false.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

“To feel successful, you must be able to be honest about the things that are really important to you.”
― Daniel Amen

“When you optimize your talents very well, you can pick money from people's pockets and nobody will ever get the guts to call you a thief.”
― Israelmore Ayivor