Brain Science Quotes

I found myself fascinated by neuroscience, attended a monthly lecture on brain science at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, and was invited to become a member of a discussion group devoted to a new field: neuropsychoanalysis. ~ Siri Hustvedt

When we look at a solid lump of iron or rock, we are 'really' looking at what is almost entirely empty space. It looks and feels solid and opaque because our sensory systems and brains find it convenient to treat it as solid and opaque. It is convenient for the brain to represent a rock as solid because we can't walk through it. 'Solid' is our way of experiencing things that we can't walk through or fall throug, because of the electromagnetic forces between atoms. 'Opaque' is the experience we have when light bounces off the surface of an object, and none of it goes through. ~ Richard Dawkins

Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think. ~ Ambrose Bierce

As followers of natural science we know nothing of any relation between thoughts and the brain, except as a gross correlation in time and space. ~ Charles Scott Sherrington

[Patricia Greenfield] concluded that "every medium develops some cognitive skills at the expense of others." Our growing use of the Net and other screen-based technologies has led to the "widespread and sophisticated development of visual-spatial skills." We can, for example, rotate objects in our minds better than we used to be able to. But our "new strengths in visual-spatial intelligence" go hand in hand with a weakening of our capacities for the kind of "deep processing" that underpins "mindful knowledge acquisition, inductive analysis, critical thinking, imagination, and reflection. ~ Nicholas Carr

I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it's a very poor scheme for survival. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

The brain is an island in an osmotically homogeneous sea. ~ Francis Daniels Moore

I once read that if the folds in the cerebral cortex were smoothed out it would cover a card table. That seemed quite unbelievable but it did make me wonder just how big the cortex would be if you ironed it out. I thought it might just about cover a family-sized pizza: not bad, but no card-table. I was astonished to realize that nobody seems to know the answer. A quick search yielded the following estimates for the smoothed out dimensions of the cerebral cortex of the human brain.

An article in Bioscience in November 1987 by Julie Ann Miller claimed the cortex was a "quarter-metre square." That is napkin-sized, about ten inches by ten inches. Scientific American magazine in September 1992 upped the ante considerably with an estimated of 1 1/2 square metres; thats a square of brain forty inches on each side, getting close to the card-table estimate. A psychologist at the University of Toronto figured it would cover the floor of his living room (I haven't seen his living room), but the prize winning estimate so far is from the British magazine New Scientist's poster of the brain published in 1993 which claimed that the cerebral cortex, if flattened out, would cover a tennis court. How can there be such disagreement? How can so many experts not know how big the cortex is? I don't know, but I'm on the hunt for an expert who will say the cortex, when fully spread out, will cover a football field. A Canadian football field. ~ Jay Ingram

I would not hesitate to say I was addicted to the Internet in the first two years. It can be addictive, and things not taken in moderation have negative effects. But the alarmism around 'Facebook is changing our brains' strikes me as a kind of historical trick. Because we now know from brain science that everything changes our brains. ~ Clay Shirky

Our brains are minuscule fragments of the universe, much too small to hold all the facts of the world but not too idle to speculate about them. ~ Valentino Braitenberg

Many people are afraid to teach because they don't think they know enough. I hope I've put the lie to that. But also consider this: work in brain science has shown that nothing is better for maintaining your memory and critical thinking skills as you age than continuous learning. And remember, there's no better way to learn than to teach. This is not to mention the threat of obsolescence. As the pace of technological change has quickened, the pace of change throughout all of work life has been cranked up, and those who don't constantly work out on the cognitive treadmill find themselves lapped by the new young things right out of college. Finally, ~ Richie Etwaru

Each of us - whether a loved daughter or not - has experienced hurts, slights, and disappointments that, even if half-forgotten or mostly unseen, remain remembered and a part of us nonetheless. Sometimes they are rooted in the deep past but, equally, they may be part of the lived present, and there may be moments when our own unresolved feelings may endanger the equilibrium of our relationships with our daughters. From the point of view of brain science, whether we address those feelings from what Siegel and Hartzell call the "high road" - the powers of reflection embedded in the prefrontal cortex of the brain - or the "low road" - automatic responses embedded in the past applied to the situation at hand - will make all the difference. ~ Peg Streep

I wouldn't say philosophy and theology are dead. Brain science doesn't invent new philosophies but it helps remind us which of our existing philosophies are more true. ~ David Brooks

The first proponent of cortical memory networks on a major scale was neither a neuroscientist nor a computer scientist but .. a Viennes economist: Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992). A man of exceptionally broad knowledge and profound insight into the operation of complex systems, Hayek applied such insight with remarkable success to economics (Nobel Prize, 1974), sociology, political science, jurisprudence, evolutionary theory, psychology, and brain science (Hayek, 1952). ~ Joaquin Fuster

This is the most exciting part of being human. It is using our brains in the highest way. Otherwise we are just healthy animals ~ Edwin Land

I can be a bit of a science geek. I tend more towards reading about brain science, neuroscience. ~ William Mapother

A knowledge of brain science will provide one of the major foundations of the new age to come. That knowledge will spawn cures for disease, new machines based on brain function, further insights into our nature and how we know. ~ Gerald Edelman

In science one must search for ideas. If there are no ideas, there is no science. A knowledge of facts is only valuable in so far as facts conceal ideas: facts without ideas are just the sweepings of the brain and the memory. ~ Vissarion Belinsky

Science Fiction will never run out of things to wonder about until the human race ceases to use its brain. ~ Julian May

Swiftly the brain becomes an enchanted loom, where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern-always a meaningful pattern-though never an abiding one. ~ Charles Scott Sherrington

Kids are different from adults. They are not as developed as far as brain science, controlling impulses, and maturity, and fall prey to all kinds of pressures. ~ Greg Boyle

I realize that, to many readers, Hard Fantasy may seem to be a contradiction in terms. Fantasy, according to most generally recognized definitions, differs from both 'real world' fiction and 'science fiction' in that magic or magical creatures are active elements. ~ Jane Lindskold

A man may possess a profound knowledge of history and mathematics; he may be an authority in psychology, biology, or astronomy; he may know all the discovered truths pertaining to geology and natural science; but if he has not with this knowledge that nobility of soul which prompts him to deal justly with his fellow men, to practice virtue and holiness in his personal life, he is not truly an educated man.
Character is the aim of true education; and science, history, and literature are but means used to accomplish the desired end. Character is not the result of chance work but of continuous right thinking and right acting. ~ David O. McKay

I have previously reduced the whole science of logic to two facts.

The first is that our perceptions being every thing for us, we are
perfectly, completely, and necessarily sure of whatever we actually feel.

The second is that consequently none of our judgments, separately
taken, can be erroneous: inasmuch as we see one idea in another it is
actually there; but their falsity, when it takes place, is purely relative
to anterior judgments, which we permit to subsist; and it consists in
this, that we believe the idea in which we perceive a new element to
be the same as that we have always had under the same sign, when it
is really different, since the new element which we actually see there
is incompatible with some of those which we have previously seen;
so that to avoid contradiction we must either take away the former or
not admit the latter. ~ Antoine Destutt De Tracy

As far as I can see, your lordship's never been hungry, never killed, never stolen. what ever can you know of the world? You've got an innocent's brain and you skin's never felt the sun, ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

Everywhere we see shadowy minds, cloudy brains! World needs more light of wisdom! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

To put it simply, the lizard brain is purely concerned with survival. ~ Stephen Richards

Mathematics education is much more complicated than you expected, even though you expected it to be more complicated than you expected. ~ Edward Griffith Begle

Many persons nowadays seem to think that any conclusion must be very scientific if the arguments in favor of it are derived from twitching of frogs' legs (especially if the frogs are decapitated) and that, on the other hand, any doctrine chiefly vouched for by the feelings of human beings (with heads on their shoulders) must be benighted and superstitious. ~ William James

Simon's brain tried to comprehend the situation. 'Was an international supermodel really holding Doc Gutson, leader of the infamous Bloodworth Gang, captive? ~ Clare Havens

A warm human plumpness settled down on his brain. His brain yielded. Perfume of embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh obscurely, he mutely craved to adore. ~ James Joyce

The brain could go just about anywhere with anything. ~ Kristen Heitzmann

In the eighteenth century, philosophers considered the whole of human knowledge, including science, to be their field and discussed questions such as: Did the universe have a beginning? However, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, science became too technical and mathematical for the philosophers, or anyone else except a few specialists. Philosophers reduced the scope of their inquiries so much that Wittgenstein, the most famous philosopher of this century, said, "The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language." What a comedown from the great tradition of philosophy from Aristotle to Kant! ~ Stephen Hawking

The shape I'm in, I could donate my body to science fiction. ~ Rodney Dangerfield

Many of us have bought into the idea that science, though practiced by humans, has managed to rid itself of human flaws. But if we intend to question everything, perhaps we should begin by questioning whether the human testing of human ideas can be so simple, considering how complicated humans are. ~ Douglas Axe

[Question: Do you feel that scientists correct themselves as often as they should?]
More often than politicians, but not as often as they should. ~ Stephen Hawking

It is time to create new social science departments that reflect the breadth and complexity of the problems we face as well as the novelty of 21st-century science. These would include departments of biosocial science, network science, neuroeconomics, behavioral genetics and computational social science. ~ Nicholas A. Christakis

[Egyptian] advances in medicine, however, as well as in other areas of science, were limited to their attempts to solve the problems confronting them. They did not attempt to probe into the realm of theory.
"History for the Egyptians was the cyclic recurrence of the elements of the divine eternal order. Just as the land was reborn each year, so the pharaoh who died and became Osiris was reborn in Horus, his son and successor. The passage of time was marked by the succession of pharaohs, who were grouped into dynasties and numbered. ~ Norman F. Cantor

The body is a very low level machine language. The language of the soul, of the mind, is much more evolved. ~ Frederick Lenz

Somehow the thought she might be next wasn't nearly as terrifying as the realization he was gone. ~ Marcha A. Fox

People have now a-days got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do as much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken. ~ Samuel Johnson

I have a problem,' said Nikolai Nikolaivitch Asterinov, getting to his feet. 'I have a problem, that I wish to share with this, our science fiction writers' collective. We are to concoct a race of aliens against which humanity can unite. Spacefaring aliens, no?' 'Yes, of course.' 'Then this is my problem. We know the party line. The philosophy of the party has always been that capitalistic Western fantasies of launching rockets to other planets will always be doomed by the internal contradictions of the competitive inefficiency of capitalism itself. Only the combined and unified effort of a whole people would be able to achieve so monumental an achievement as interstellar flight. No capitalist race could ever achieve something as sophisticated as interstellar flight; only communists could do this. Now, how can it be that these evil aliens are able to build spaceships and fly across the void? Surely they are not communists? ~ Adam Roberts

The human brain is wired to cope with grief. It knows even as we fall into unfathomably dark places, there will be light again, and if we just keep moving forward in one brave straight line, however slowly, we'll find our way back again. ~ Josie Silver

In every idea of genius or in every new human idea, or, more simply still, in every serious human idea born in anyone's brain, there is something that cannot possibly be conveyed to others. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Study hard, for the well is deep, and our brains are shallow. ~ Richard Baxter

Fair mindedness doesn't require a lot of thought, it requires a lot of bravery. ~ Toni Sorenson

Your emotions are nothing but biochemical storms in your brain and you are in control of them at any point in time. ~ Tony Robbins

Life is just like a game,
First you have to learn rules of the game,
And then play it better then any one else. ~ Albert Einstein

Culinary science?" I cried. "You elected culinary science? That's like the most brainless class ever. ~ Richelle Mead

The goal is nothing other than the coherence and completeness of the system not only in respect of all details, but also in respect of all physicists of all places, all times, all peoples, and all cultures. ~ Max Planck

Because God is a rational being and the universe is his personal creation, it necessarily has a rational, lawful, stable structure, awaiting increased human comprehension. This is the key to many intellectual undertakings, among them, the rise of science. ~ Rodney Stark

We will eventually build space science labs and hotels, prodding the capability for missions beyond the orbit of the Earth. Our space-hotel guests will be able to take breath-taking excursions, flying a couple of hundred feet above the Moon's surface in small two-man spaceships. In time, we will launch missions to Mars and beyond. ~ Richard Branson

Ah, God. Brain freeze!" Trey yelled and covered his eye with his free hand. "Fuck. Why does that hurt so bad?"
Reagan laughed at him. "Suck it more slowly next time," she advised.
He had fifteen lines he could have used at that moment. ~ Olivia Cunning

If all art aspires to the condition of music, all the sciences aspire to the condition of mathematics. ~ George Santayana

There are times when it appears impossible to look beyond what our mind has reasoned to be truth. If given complete control, it can easily hold us captive behind seemingly impenetrable walls of fear and doubt. However, the brain has a resilient nemesis that possesses far greater powers… the human heart. Within it lies love, forgiveness and the strength that is vital to free our spirit from the mind's iron grasp. ~ Tina F. Snyder

The doctrine called Philosophical Necessity is simply this: that, given the motives which are present to an individual's mind, and given likewise the character and disposition of the individual, the manner in which he will act might be unerringly inferred: that if we knew the person thoroughly, and knew all the inducements which are acting upon him, we could foretell his conduct with as much certainty as we can predict any physical event. ~ John Stuart Mill

Snorting cocaine is like feeding pork to the brain. ~ Big Pun

My friend Ian Hagemann, a regular at Wiscon, once said on a panel that when he reads science fiction futures that are full of white people and no one else, he wonders when the race war happened that wiped out the majority of the human race, and why the writer hasn't mentioned such an important plot point. ~ Nalo Hopkinson

scientists are learning that people have more capacity for lifelong learning and brain development than they ever thought. ~ Carol S. Dweck