Brain Damage Quotes

Getting toxic lead out of gasoline, the oil industry shouted, would cost a dollar a gallon. It turned out to cost just a penny a gallon to protect hundreds of thousands of kids from lead-induced brain damage. ~ Frances Beinecke

Poor Scott. Briefly, briefly, as a boy on the verge of manhood, he'd been so handsome and promising that the sequel must have seemed a dream; behind the acne and brain damage and bewildering alienation, he was a golden boy still. Probably he thought he'd given his poor old stepmom the thrill of her life. One thing was certain: at that moment he'd loved her and was sorry for ever thinking ill of her - she'd packed his lunch! - and wanted to convey this in some meaningful way. Probably, too, he was drunk and/or high. As Scott's only brother - a person who shared his sense of humor and some of his darker tendencies too - I considered explaining as much to Sandra, for what it was worth. Instead I said, "Welcome to the club." ". . . No!" I nodded. "Tongue and all." Sandra ~ Blake Bailey

Which was worse: a friend with brain damage, or one who despised you? ~ Scott Westerfeld

And your neihjbour is sitting next door weeping as she watches her child facing a crowd of Palestiniankids armed with rocks which could take your boy's eye out or give him brain damage if god forbids he took off his helmet one of those dusty stones hit him in the head ~ Linda Grant

Permanent brain damage is one of the inevitable results of the use of marijuana. ~ Ronald Reagan

This is the hallmark of a robust biological system: political parties can perish in a tragic accident and the society will still run, sometimes with little more than a hiccup to the system. It may be that for every strange clinical case in which brain damage leads to a bizarre change in behavior or perception, there are hundreds of cases in which parts of the brain are damaged with no detectable clinical sign. ~ David Eagleman

The disinhibition caused by said brain damage, can also spur the infected individual to seek the pleasure of compulsive, casual sexual activity ~ Chuck Palahniuk

My mother watched her loving husband look at her with blankness or contempt and sometimes hatred. And yet dementia is classed as a social condition, so that the state is not required to pay for long-term residential care. Calling it what it is - brain damage - is too expensive. ~ Rose George

I don't believe anything I write or say. I regard belief as a form of brain damage, the death of intelligence, the fracture of creativity, the atrophy of imagination. I have opinions but no Belief System (B.S.) ~ Robert Anton Wilson

Use the words that live inside your head. And if the words that live inside your head are those of a sentimental Victorian troubadour, then please close your head in a door jamb until you kill all that overwrought prose in an act of brain damage. ~ Chuck Wendig

When people hurt your feelings, keep remembering these words: "In years to come, will it matter?" Time heals almost everything. Give yourself time ... And what other people think of you is none of your business ... it's in their head to give them brain damage and not yours ... my secret of Longevity. ~ Peekey

A woman (Terri Schiavo) was healthy. There was brain damage, there was no question. But from a health point of view, she was not terminally ill. ~ Michele Bachmann

Are you in there? If not here, then where'd you go?
They say the living arena Earth and the dead are out,
But where are those trapped in-between high and low?
Where exactly are you wandering about?

Why would this happen to a human being?
I want to curse God and call him a fake,
But I am too desperate to risk ruining
The chance he may choose to help today. ~ Karl Kristian Flores

I never did think I had brain damage. ~ Leon Spinks

Brain damage and stupidity are very different things, but can have similar effects on the wearer. ~ Dov Davidoff

Boxing is a glorious sport to watch and boxers are incredible, heroic athletes, but it's also, to be honest, a stupid game to play. Even the winners can end up with crippling brain damage. In a lot of ways, hustling is the same. But you learn something special from playing the most difficult games, the games where winning is close to impossible and losing is catastrophic: You learn how to compete as if your life depended on it. That's the lesson I brought with me to the so-called "legitimate" world. ~ Jay-Z

I regard belief as a form of brain damage. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

When you screw up, you got to pay the price. Shoot up a supermarket, you go to jail. Ride a motorcycle without a helmet, permanent brain damage and in California you're getting a ticket. Too chatty on a date with my dad, well, he'll push you in front of a cross town bus. Of course, you know, I'm speaking metaphorically. My dad will push you in front of any bus. ~ Christopher Titus

It is not customary to refer to organisms when we talk about brain
and mind. It has been so obvious that mind arises from the activity
of neurons that only neurons are discussed as if their operation
could be independent from that of the rest of the organism. But as I
investigated disorders of memory, language, and reason in numerous
human beings with brain damage, the idea that mental activity, from
its simplest aspects to its most sublime, requires both brain and body
proper became especially compelling. ~ Antonio R Damasio

The problem is, of course, that not only is economics bankrupt but it has always been nothing more than politics in disguise ... economics is a form of brain damage. ~ Hazel Henderson

Emery cut in impatiantly, "For crying out loud. Who do you think you are, Nancy Drew?"
Hey," I snapped, because no one sniped at my sister but me, and Mark echoed with a stern "Chill, dude."
Phin was unperturbed. "Those books were highly unrealistic. Do you have any idea how much brain damage a person would have if she were hit on the head and drugged with chloroform that often? ~ Rosemary Clement-Moore

Words, if you have certain problems with your brain but are raised in a good home, you might turn out okay. If your brain is fine and your home is terrible, you might still turn out fine. But if you have mild brain damage and end up with a bad home life, you're tossing the dice for a very unlucky synergy. ~ David Eagleman

She winced at the rush of pain that shuddered through the base of her skull. "Holy balls, my head hurts."
"God, your mouth." The way he said it almost sounded like a groan.
"I think you like my mouth." The instant the words were out she wished she could reel them back in. Oh yeah, clearly she had a concussion. Or freaking brain damage.
To her surprise, his lips pulled up in the first honest to God smile she'd ever seen from him. It completely transformed his constantly gruff expression into something that should be considered illegal. "You wouldn't be wrong about that," he murmured.
Wait…what? ~ Katie Reus

Whenever we read about people's lives, fictional or non-, we have to put ourselves into the minds of the characters. And honestly, my mind has never had to stretch so far, never had to work so hard, as it did to inhabit the minds of people with brain damage. They're recognizably human in so many ways, and yet still somehow off: Hamlet seems transparent next to H.M. But that's the power of stories, to reach across that divide. ~ Sam Kean

In my universe, when a dork like Oscar pushes up on a girl like Jenni, he usually gets bounced faster than your tía Daisy's rent checks, but Jenni must have had brain damage or been really into fat loser nerdboys, because by the end of February she was actually treating him all civil and shit. ~ Junot Diaz

A boxing contest is a brain-damage contest. Who can give out more brain damage and who can absorb more of it? ~ Jonathan Gottschall

I was sitting in my lab, my hand spread open on the table, while the skull examined my palm.

I'd worn a mark there for years--an unblemished patch of skin amidst all the burn scars, in the perfect shape of the angelic sigil that was Lasciel's name.

The mark was gone.

In its place was just an irregular patch of unburned skin.

"It looks like there's no mark there anymore," Bob said.

I sighed. "Thank you, Bob," I said. "It's good to have a professional opinion."

"Well, what did you expect?" Bob said. The skull swiveled around on the table and tilted up to look at my face. "Hmmmmm. And you say the entity isn't responding to you anymore?"

"No. And she's always jumped every time I said frog."

"Interesting," Bob said.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, from what you told me, this psychic attack the entity blocked for you was quite severe."

I shivered, remembering. "Yeah."

"And the process she used to accelerate your brain and shield you was traumatic as well."

"Right. She said it could cause me brain damage."

"Uh-huh," Bob said. "I think it did."

"Huh?"

"See what I mean?" Bob asked cheerfully. "You're thicker already."

"Harry get hammer," I said. "Smash stupid talky skull. ~ Jim Butcher

What is the verdict?"

"There is always hope." His face softened. "However, it's unlikely your brain damage will improve."

He'd given me the answer I'd expected and dreaded.

I shut my eyes and sagged into the pillows. I'd braced myself for this result, but I'd wanted a miracle so badly that it was painful to hear the truth.

Sunlight pressed in on me, trying to cheer me up. I would resist a moment longer. This room, the quilt, my closed eyes - they formed a serene barrier against the world, although it wasn't clear to me if I wanted to keep the scary stuff out or the scared me in. ~ Elizabeth Langston

Economics is a form of brain damage, ~ Hazel Henderson

Many „pathogens" (both chemical and behavioral) can influence how you turn out; these include substance abuse by a mother during pregnancy, maternal stress, and low birth weight. As a child grows, neglect, physical abuse, and head injury can cause problems in mental development. Once the child is grown, substance abuse and exposure to a variety of toxins can damage the brain, modifying intelligence, aggression, and decision-making abilities. The major public health movement to remove lead-based paint grew out of an understanding that even low levels of lead can cause brain damage that makes children less inteligent and, in some cases, more impulsive and aggressive. How you turn out depends on where you´ve been. So when it comes to thinking about blameworthiness, the first difficulty to consider is that people do not choose their own developmental path.
It´s problematic to imagine yourself in the shoes of a criminal and conclude, „Well, I wouldn´t have done that" – because if you weren´t exposed to in utero cocaine, lead poisoning, or physical abuse, and he was, then you and he are not directly comparable. ~ David Eagleman

In an effort to civilize combat sports, authorities mandated padded gloves and instantly made the sports far more savage. Granted, putting gloves on the hands seems like a nice thing to do. If you were being punched in the brain by a powerful man, wouldn't you rather he strap a pillow around his fist? But the glove doesn't do anything to diminish your brain damage. ~ Jonathan Gottschall

Writing poetry and reading books causes brain damage. ~ Pat Conroy

When something like this happens, you suddenly have no sense of reality at all. You have lost a piece of your past. The infidelity itself is small potatoes compared to the low-level brain damage that results when a whole chunk of your life turns out to have been completely different from what you thought it was. It becomes impossible to look back at anything that's happened ... without wondering what was really going on. ~ Nora Ephron

One man's creativity is another's brain damage. ~ Roland L. Fischer

I shuffled my weight from foot to foot, trying to relieve some of the soreness and wondering how long it would take Reth to figure out where I was and get into Raquel's room.
The door slid open in reply.
Jack and I darted in, letting out twin sighs of relief. Lend, of course, immediately dropped to the floor. Naked, still. I doubted Raquel had anything in his size.
"He was rather upset waking up in the Faerie Paths with me," Reth said.
"I can't imagine." I quickly scanned Raquel's austere living room area. "There, help me get him into that closet."
Jack grabbed an arm and we dragged my poor boyfriend across the floor and shoved him into the tiny coat closet next to Raquel's vacuum. I added watching Lend walk to the things I missed most about him.
We closed the door and after a few moments a loud thunk sounded. "What the - Where am I? Evie?"
"Right here," I said, tapping on the door. "You're in a closet in Raquel's unit."
"Why?"
"Because I'm going to search the rest of her place and I didn't want you to risk brain damage by any more unconscious falls."
He muttered something unintelligible but distinctly grouchy and I turned, quickly scanning the room. ~ Kiersten White

Yes, I hear that people who suffer from brain damage are quite happy. That's what I always wanted for you, Edith: for you to be happy, no matter how many blows to the head it takes. ~ Josiah Bancroft

If you want your tree to produce plenty o' fruit, you've got to cut it back from time to time. Same thing with your neural cells. Some people might call it brain damage. I call it prunin'. ~ Tom Robbins

In this world, there is a fine line between enlightenment and brain damage. ~ Neal Shusterman

Consciousness surely does not depend on language. Babies, many animals, and patients robbed of speech by brain damage are not insensate robots; they have reactions like ours that indicate that someone's home. ~ Steven Pinker

Housework, if it is done properly, can cause brain damage. ~ Erma Bombeck

You want to pay me? Give me a slice of that pizza."

"What? Seriously?"

"That's Rinaldo's pizza. I've got a weakness."

"You want a slice of pizza?"

"It doesn't seem like much to ask after I risked a concussion and possible brain damage to change your tire. ~ Nora Roberts

William: I just had the best idea ever. Let's give Maddox a ring.
Paris: You mean propose to him? To grumpy ole Maddox? Willie, why didn't you tell us you're a masochist, who swung that way? You're so delicate, he'll rip you to shreds the moment you climb into his bed. Plus, he's hitched himself to Ashlyn. You try to lay a move on him, and that sweet thang will rearrange your face.
William: I mean call him, you idiot. What's with you tonight? Permanent brain damage? We'll breath heavily and ask him what he's wearing. I bet no one's phone sexed him before. ~ Gena Showalter

Well, if I ever suffer brain damage I know there's always a career waiting for me in local politics. ~ Jonathan L. Howard

Brain damage is never a good idea, no matter what your friends say. ~ Ted Chiang

Oof!" Adam caught me all right, with the side of his head. I could tell by the feel of his skull on my foot as I kicked him. He grabbed me the best he could anyway, and we half landed, half fell in the pine needles.
He lay facedown on the ground. I flopped him over on his back to make sure he was alive. If he had a concussion, we'd have to call the ambulance, which meant we'd get caught and he'd get sent to military school.
On the bright side, maybe the military school would not take him if he had brain damage.
"I'm so sorry."
"Worth it," he grunted. He rolled onto his feet like a ninja and grabbed my hand.
"Hurry, before they release the hounds. ~ Jennifer Echols

I will cross that bridge when it comes. I am not stupid. I am a very bright guy. I know that in the fighting game, you get people who get brain damage and do themselves long-term harm. I am into it in a big way, and I am good at it, and I am going to get very, very rich and then I will get out and we will see what comes after that. ~ Conor McGregor

Where does personality end and brain damage begin? ~ Douglas Coupland

Sometimes Tally felt she could almost accept brain damage if it meant a life without reconstituted noodles. ~ Scott Westerfeld

Cognitive reality of an individual solely arises from the make-up of that individual's brain structure. Any kind of damage, like stroke can alter this reality without the awareness of the individual. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Glad it was you and not me," Shane said, and offered Myrin a hand up. "Any brain damage?"
"Since the bullet actually passed through his brain, then yes, idiot boy, there's certainly brain damage," Oliver said. "It will pass. His brain's the least fragile thing about him."
"You say the nicest things," Myrin said. He was slurring his words, and he threw an arm around Oliver's neck. "Marry me. ~ Rachel Caine

There is no medical proof that television causes brain damage - at least from over five feet away. In fact, TV is probably the least physically harmful of all the narcotics known to man. ~ Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

The people we love get under our skin and crawl through our veins and fine their way into our heart. They choke up our blood flow and mess up our breathing and tangle themselves through our bodies like wire. Like razors, like fire.
We remember them even when we don't remember them.
We try and forget, but it's pointless.
Even amnesia. Even comas and brain damage and traumatic shock.
Whatever makes us not remember, we still remember.
Our minds flounder like fish but our bodies...
Our bodies remember. ~ Katrina Leno

In Kamby Bolongo Mean River damage and delusion walk hand in hand, and everything we think we know is gradually called into question. Reading like a cross between Samuel Beckett's 'The Calmative' and Gordon Lish's Dear Mr. Capote, Robert Lopez's new novel gets under your skin and latches on. ~ Brian Evenson

Neuroscientists rarely have to grapple with the issue of presentism versus existentialism. But in practice, neuroscientists are implicitly presentists. They view the past, present, and future as fundamentally distinct, as the brain makes decisions in the present, based on the memories of the past, to enhance our well being in the future. But despite its intuitive appeal, presentism is the underdog theory in physics and philosophy. ~ Dean Buonomano

Far away, I could hear them lapping up my brains. Like Macbeth's witches, the three lithe cats surrounded my broken head, slurping up that thick soup inside. The tips of their rough tongues licked the soft folds of my mind. And with each lick my consciousness flickered like a flame and faded away. ~ Haruki Murakami

Something I've noticed over the years is that when people have a lot of things going wrong at once, they seem to lose the ability to make clear decisions. It's as though, faced with an overload of stress, the brain simply shuts down. ~ Tom Bale

Scott the other night: the dream was just my brain picking all that apart. ~ Paula Hawkins

Tried to put shame in my game to make a name,
I'mma put it on a bullet ... put it in your brain. ~ Rakim

Yet as human beings we have to accept-with humility-that the question of ultimate origins will always remain with us, no matter how deeply we understand the brain and the cosmos that it creates. ~ V.S. Ramachandran

If we are not using our brains' capacity for challenge it feels to me as though it atrophies like an unused muscle. ~ Philippa Perry

We have noted that gut feelings are an important part of the body's sensory apparatus, helping us to evaluate the environment and assess whether a situation is safe. Gut feelings magnify perceptions that the emotional centres of the brain find important and relay through the hypothalamus. Pain in the gut is one signal the body uses to send messages that are difficult for us to ignore. Thus, pain is also a mode of perception. Physiologically, the pain pathways channel information that we have blocked from reaching us by more direct routes. Pain is a powerful secondary mode of perception to alert us when our primary modes have shut down. It provides us with data that we ignore at our peril. ~ Gabor Mate

To assess the damage is a dangerous act. ~ Cherrie Moraga

I guess my brain will never work right. At least I'm pretty. ~ Stephenie Meyer

It can no longer be an afterthought in a child's development that the analytical side is not of equal to the creative side. That the creative side can be pushed aside and we just push the analytical side. Especially with the development of a child's brain at the elementary levels. ~ Johnathon Schaech

There's no doubt having an autistic child represents tremendous challenges for both the children and their parents, but in my experience, it has brought me closer to my family and has given me an appreciation for how the human brain develops and the uniqueness of each child it afflicts. ~ Manny Alvarez

This business of really knowing people, deep down, including your own self, it is not something you can learn in school or from a book. It takes your whole being to do it - your eyes and your ears, your brain and your heart. Maybe your heart most of all. ~ James Howe

When we switch gears, we in effect move the problem that we have been trying to solve from our conscious brain to our unconscious ~ Anonymous

Specialists are the animals that remind us what an incredible fluke it is that our world exists at all; that the temperature is what it is, that the air we breathe is 21 percent oxygen. They remind us how much damage even the smallest changes to that system can cause and they show us how badly we're screwing things up. ~ Rob Stewart

The most altruistic and sustainable philosophies fail before the brute brain stem imperative of self-interest. ~ Peter Watts

Green leaned his head back, wanting everything Ruxs was going to do to him. "Upstairs. Get the fuck upstairs, Mark. We can't do it right here. What if Curtis comes downstairs?" Green panted. Thank god some portion of his brain was still working. "Oh shit. You're right." Ruxs chuckled softly, rubbing his hand up and down Green's body. "You're so goddamn beautiful, I can't think straight when I see you. You can't be walking around in a fuckin' silk robe, nothing but this soft material between me and your naked body." He squeezed Green's ass, thrust against him a couple more times before he dropped Green's robe back down and pulled his pajama pants back over his ass. "Go ~ A.E. Via

Why hadn't he told me? Because I'd called him a liar and untrustworthy, and had made it plain I wasn't going to change my opinion, no matter what. Then why hadn't he told my brother, who did trust him?
That I couldn't answer. And in a sense it didn't matter. What did matter was that I had been wrong about Shevraeth. I had been so wrong I had nearly gotten a lot of people killed for no reason.
Just thinking it made me grit my teeth, and in a way it felt almost as bad as cleaning the fester from my wounded foot. Which was right, because I had to clean out from my mind the fester caused by anger and hatred. I remembered suddenly that horrible day in Galdran's dungeon when the Marquis had come to me himself and offered me a choice between death and surrender. "It might buy you time," he'd said.
At that moment I'd seen surrender as dishonor, and it had taken courage to refuse. He'd seen that and had acknowledged it in many different ways, including his words two days before about my being a heroine. Generous words, meant to brace me up. What I saw now was the grim courage it had taken to act his part in Galdran's Court, all the time planning to change things with the least amount of damage to innocent people. And when Branaric and I had come crashing into his plans, he'd included us as much as he could in his net of safety. My subsequent brushes with death were, I saw miserably now, my own fault.
I had to respect what he'd done. He'd come to respect us for our ~ Sherwood Smith

Back from when they watched black and white TV and hunted dinosaurs. ~ Rick Riordan

When we think we're multitasking we're actually multiswitching. That is what the brain is very good at doing - quickly diverting its attention from one place to the next. We think we're being productive. We are, indeed, being busy. But in reality we're simply giving ourselves extra work. ~ Michael Harris

If believing absurd falsehoods increase the odds of getting laid or avoiding predators, your brain will believe those falsehoods with all its metaphorical little heart. ~ Peter Watts

There is something oddly therapeutic about trudging through marshy sand, the feeling of squishiness below the feet signaling to the brain that it's OK to just let go for a while. ~ Sarah Jio

Those dreams that on the silent night intrude, and with false flitting shapes our minds delude ... are mere productions of the brain. And fools consult interpreters in vain. ~ Jonathan Swift

Actually I've never seen a cycle-maintenance problem complex enough really to require full-scale formal scientific method. Repair problems are not that hard. When I think of formal scientific method an image sometimes comes to mind of an enormous juggernaut, a huge bulldozer-slow, tedious, lumbering, laborious, but invincible. It takes twice as long, five times as long, maybe a dozen times as long as informal mechanic's techniques, but you know in the end you're going to get it. There's no fault isolation problem in motorcycle maintenance that can stand up to it. When you've hit a really tough one, tried everything, racked your brain and nothing works, and you know that this time Nature has really decided to be difficult, you say, "Okay, Nature, that's the end of the nice guy," and you crank up the formal scientific method. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

The sleeping brain has eyes that give us light; we can never see our destiny by day. ~ Aeschylus

Everyone should occasionally break the law in some small and delightful way, Drumknott. It's good for the hygiene of the brain. ~ Terry Pratchett

That's where the public like their artists - exposed, trousers down, arse up, doing a long stretch among serial killers, and shitting in front of strangers. That'll teach 'em to think their talent makes them better than mediocre no-brain tax-paying wage slaves like us. ~ Hanif Kureishi

It is literally the case that learning languages makes you smarter. The neural networks in the brain strengthen as a result of language learning. ~ Michael Gove

He wrote to tell him not to be scared that he had injured his brain, because he had done the same thing and got better. It was a source of comfort beyond words. ~ Richard Hammond

For a long time, I used to think that I had a man's brain that I thought more like a man than a woman. But now I've come to realise that whatever it is I do think like, it's not like men; because men don't really think like men, they think like boys. ~ David Baddiel

The usual masculine dissillusionment is discovering that a woman has a brain ~ Margaret Mitchell

From morning till night, sounds drift from the kitchen, most of them familiar and comforting ... On days when warmth is the most important need of the human heart, the kitchen is the place you can find it; it dries the wet sock, it cools the hot little brain. ~ E.B. White

There is no greater place for damage (than marriage) because there is no greater place for glory. ~ John Eldredge

Impulses are flowing through my brain - primal sparks leaping gaps - all so I can put my arms around you ... ~ John Geddes

1. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in "advanced" countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in "advanced" countries. ~ Theodore John Kaczynski