Brains Versus Brawn Quotes

The point to remember is that the issue is not nature versus nurture. It is the balance between nature and nurture. Genes do not make a man gay, or violent, or fat, or a leader. Genes merely make proteins. The chemical effect of these proteins may make the man's brain and body more receptive to certain environmental influences. But the extent of those influences will have as much to do with the outcome as the genes themselves. Furthermore, we humans are not prisoners of our genes or our environment. We have free will. Genes are overruled every time an angry man restrains his temper, a fat man diets, and an alocholic refuses to take a drink. On the other hand, the environment is overruled every time a genetic effect wins out, as when Lou Gehrig's athletic ability was overruled by his ALS. Genes and the environment work together to shape our brains, and we can manage them both if we want to. It may be harder for people with certain genes or surroundings, but "harder" is a long way from pedetermination. ~ John J. Ratey

Aiden, his brains are on the foyer floor, I'm pretty sure that is a universally accepted indicator that a person is dead. ~ Alanea Alder

I sighed at the spectacular realization that I had never really allowed myself to believe that real cowboys might actually exist, especially not one with brains and killer blue eyes, alive and breathing in my barn. This man was a real cowboy, not on the big screen, in my dreams or in my imagination, but here in my barn. ~ Carly Kade

There are probably more of us. If we're all zombies, then
there's got to be more. I say we go up to the cemetery and find out."
"Can we get soda on the way?"
Nothing washes down brains better than a can of Coca Cola and a little shameless product placement. (Hey, the undead do have an image problem.)
"Soda and cemeteries! Soda and cemeteries!" they chanted. "And braaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiins!"
"Hey Bernie, you're getting pretty good at that."
"Okay, you try."
"Braaa - " the zombie belched, " - aiiinsss."
Earl heaved the coroner's body out of the way. They headed off for the cemetery, each trying furiously to perfect their own, unique and personal call for brains like an undead choir, out of tune.
"Braaaaiiiiins!" "Braaiiiiiiiinns!" "Braaaaaaaaaains!" "Bray-uns."
"That was just awful." ...Away into the night. ~ Daniel Younger

People threw around when they wanted the conversation to end, and for brains to go dead, and for all questioning to cease. ~ Michael Lewis

After she knocked, she walked into the room with confidence she didn't feel, her head up, her spine straight, her unease camo'd by a combo of posture and professional focus. "How are you this evening?" she said, as she looked the patient right in the eye.
The instant his amethyst stare met hers, she couldn't have told a soul what had just come out of her mouth or whether he replied. Rehvenge, son of Rempoon, sucked the thought right out of her head, sure as if he'd drained the tank of her brain's generator and left her with nothing to catch a mental spark off of.
And then he smiled.

-Ehlena's thoughts ~ J.R. Ward

Seven is more than a lucky number or a famous baseball player's uniform. It's the brain's natural shepherd, herding vast amounts of information into manageable chunks. ~ Jacqueline Leo

No one expects a woman busy at her sewing to pay attention to what's being said around her. Nevermind if a man's mother and sister showerd them they heard everything while they stictched, he'll still think a woman who plies her needles saves all her brains for the work. You're a far better spy hemming sheets than if you clank with daggers. ~ Tamora Pierce

The parts of the brain corresponding to the limbic system (thought to respond only to more visceral, immediate rewards) were activated only when the decision involved comparing a reward today with one in the future. In contrast, the lateral prefrontal cortex (a more "calculating" part of the brain) responded with a similar intensity to all decisions, regardless of the timing of the options. Brains that work like this would produce a lot of failed good intentions. And indeed, we do see a lot of those, from New Year's resolutions to gym memberships that lie unused. ~ Abhijit V. Banerjee

Go 'head mouth off to me some mo'. I buzz you with my buzzer." Bennett lowered the paper to the table. "For the last time, it's not a 'buzzer.' It's not like one of those party tricks that gives somebody a little zap. It's a Taser. It's for self-defense, not for smacking someone you can't reach, and not for frying the brains out of the neighbor's dog. ~ Dawn Lee McKenna

Suppose I was able to get to court, and the zombies followed me there, and they ate all the people's brains who were in the court?'
'This is Trenton,' Lula said. 'You might not notice. ~ Janet Evanovich

But all our phrasing - race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy - serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. You must never look away from this. You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

I basically look at how exponential emerging technological changes runs counter-intuitive to the way our linear brains make projections about change, and so we don't realize how fast the future is coming. ~ Jason Silva

You've got to have brains to play dumb. ~ Helen Ellis

According to a recent study of the brains of identical and fraternal twins, differences in the amount of gray matter in the frontal lobes are not only genetically influenced but are significantly correlated with differences in intelligence. ~ Steven Pinker

I had this fantasy of becoming a neurosurgeon. You know, the normal Jewish boy fantasy, but I wanted to be a neurosurgeon for some reason. So I started in this unpleasant way. I was an assistant to the coroner, opening up corpses, taking the innards out, opening skulls, taking the brains out. ~ Joseph Brodsky

If ... you are looking for a large dose of truth with some all too human foibles and faults and long nights of coffee drenched brains and frequent trips to the bathroom then this book is for you. ~ Leviak B. Kelly

Obviously, our children, who have been playing with their computers since the age of five or six, don't have quite the same brain as those who were brought up on wooden or metal toys, whose brains are certainly atrophied by comparison. ~ Claude Vorilhon

A hunsh is your brain's way of taking a shortcut to the truth. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I sometimes used to ask myself, what on earth did I love her for? Maybe fore the warm hazel iris of her fluffy eyes, or for the natural side-wave of her brown hair, done anyhow, or again for that movement of her plump shoulders. But, probably the truth was that I loved her because she loved me. To her I was the ideal man: brains, pluck. And there was none dressed better. I remember once, when I first put on that new dinner jacket, with the vast trousers, she clapsed her hands, sank down on a chair and murmured: 'Oh, Hermann ... It was ravishment bordering upon something like heavenly woe. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Your energy, thought and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged. Having begun on one line, resolve to fight it out on that line, to lead in it, adopt every improvement, have the best machinery, and know the most about it. The concerns which fail are those which have scattered their capital, which means that they have scattered their brains also. They have investments in this, or that, or the other, here, there and everywhere. "Don't put all your eggs in one basket" is all wrong. I tell you "put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket." Look round you and take notice; men who do that do not often fail. It is easy to watch and carry the one basket. It is trying to carry too many baskets that breaks most eggs in this country. ~ Gary Keller

Software development takes immense intellectual effort. Even the best programmers can rarely sustain that level of effort for more than a few hours a day. Beyond that, they need to rest their brains a bit, which is why they always seem to be surfing the Internet or playing games when you barge in on them. ~ Joel Spolsky

Brains are no substitute for judgement. ~ Dean Acheson

Robot men with computers for brains
Space ships, cars, trains and planes
All calculated to blow your mind
Moving faster than your sense of time
Living luxuriously soft while the people slave hard
For the Devil would have you believe he is God
Chemical drugs that keep you high
While the Mean Machine creates another lie
For power and glory and world wide fame
While Running the Same Game with Another Name
It's the computer's equation for world wide invasion
That comes in the name of peace and goodwill
But all of them are lying as they keep on trying
To set the people up for the kill ~ Jalal Mansur Nuriddin

Everyone knew that at some point in history, early humans got access to a big supply of protein, which allowed their brains to expand like a thirsty sponge in a bucket of water. Our brains kept growing until they were seven times larger than the brains of any comparable mammal. They also sucked up an ungodly number of calories; even though our brains account for only 2 percent of our body weight, they demand 20 percent of our energy, compared with just 9 percent for chimps. ~ Christopher McDougall

As children develop, their brains "mirror" their parent's brain. In other words, the parent's own growth and development, or lack of those, impact the child's brain. As parents become more aware and emotionally healthy, their children reap the rewards and move toward health as well. ~ Daniel J. Siegel

I'm not a fan of reality shows, but I am a fan of people who use their brains and skills and hard work to outsmart people, not to steal someone's man or get drunk on TV. ~ Sandra Bullock

Human beings only use ten percent of their brains. Ten percent! Can you imagine how much we could accomplish if we used the other sixty percent? ~ Ellen DeGeneres

And not a girl goes walking Along the Cotswold lanes But knows men's eyes in April Are quicker than their brains. ~ John Drinkwater

Write with your heart, not your head. Brains tend to ooze out of your ears and nose when things get intense. Then you're a mess. ~ Lori Lesko

If you want people to believe you, appeal to their hearts not to their brains ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

You know, to address crowds and make promises does not require very much brains. ~ Eduard Shevardnadze

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

There's nothing logical about love," Michelle said. "If there was, Valentine's Day cards would be covered in brains instead of hearts. ~ Jay Bell

Don't duh me!" Puck snapped. "Trying to figure out what you're thinking from one day to the next takes more brains than I have."
Well, maybe you should stop. I'd hate to burn out that little peanut in your head. ~ Michael Buckley

Complicating matters, adolescent brains are more susceptible to substance abuse and dependence than adult brains, because they're making so many new synaptic connections and sloshing around with so much dopamine. Pretty much all quasi-vices to which human beings turn for relief and escape - drinking, drugs, video games, porn - have longer-lasting and more intense effects in teenagers. It makes acting out especially tempting to them, and it makes their habits especially hard to break. ~ Jennifer Senior

We have about three hours of homework a night, and our evening study period is only two hours, so if you want to spend the break at half-past-nine not freaking out, you have to cram. I'm not sure that the picture of the wide-eyed zombie girl biting out the brains of senior douchebag James Page is part of Sam's homework, bit if it is, his physics teacher is awesome. ~ Holly Black

We're the sons appalled by violence, with no capacity for inflicting physical pain, useless at beating and clubbing, unfit to pulverize even the most deserving enemy, though not necessarily without turbulence, temper, even ferocity. We have teeth as the cannibals do, but they are there, imbedded in our jaws, the better to help us articulate. When we lay waste, when we efface, it isn't with raging fists or ruthless schemes or insane sprawling violence but with our words, our brains, with mentality, with all the stuff that produced the poignant abyss between our fathers and us and that they themselves broke their backs to give us. ~ Philip Roth

And she's got brains enough for two, which is the exact quantity the girl who marries you will need. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Salem"

In salem seasick spindrift drifts or skips
to the canvas flapping on the seaward panes
until the knitting sailor stabs at ships
nosing like sheep of Morpheus through his brain's
asylum. Seaman, seaman, how the draft
lashes the oily slick about your head,
beating up whitecaps! Seaman, Charon's raft
dumps its damned goods into the harbor-bed,--
There sewage sickens the rebellious seas.
Remember, seaman, Salem fisherman
Once hung their nimble fleets on the Great Banks.
Where was it that New England bred the men
who quartered the Leviathan's fat flanks
and fought the British Lion to his knees? ~ Robert Lowell

No matter how much crap you gotta plow through to stay alive as a photographer, no matter how many bad assignments, bad days, bad clients, snotty subjects, obnoxious handlers, wigged-out art directors, technical disasters, failures of the mind, body, and will, all the shouldas, couldas, and wouldas that befuddle our brains and creep into our dreams, always remember to make room to shoot what you love. It's the only way to keep your heart beating as a photographer. ~ Joe McNally

The fact is, I suppose, that it's not enough to have brains. The thing that counts is character. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

The real history does not get written, because it is not in people's brains but in their nerves and vitals. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

All political meetings are very much alike. Somebody gets up and introduces the speaker of the evening, and then the speaker of the evening says at great length what he thinks of the scandalous manner in which the Government is behaving or the iniquitous goings-on of the Opposition. From time to time confederates in the audience rise and ask carefully rehearsed questions, and are answered fully and satisfactorily by the orator. When a genuine heckler interrupts, the orator either ignores him, or says haughtily that he can find him arguments but cannot find him brains. Or, occasionally, when the question is an easy one, he answers it. A quietly conducted political meeting is one of England's most delightful indoor games. When the meeting is rowdy, the audience has more fun, but the speaker a good deal less. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

It is the structure of the armies at the Institute. The hierarchy is good for simple tasks. Some fingers are more important than others. Some are better at certain things. All fingers are controlled by the highest order, the brain. The brain's control is effective. It makes your thumb and fingers work together. But the single brain's control is limited. Imagine each one of the fingers had a brain of its own that interacted with the main brain. The fingers obey, but they function independently. What could the hand do then? What could an army do? I twirl the stick along my fingers in intricate patterns. Exactly. ~ Pierce Brown

When our brains declare war on our very existence. ~ Jenny Lawson

(When we force a smile, we activate facial muscles with our prefrontal cortex. But when we smile because we are in a good mood, our nerves are controlled by our limbic system, which activates a slightly different set of muscles. Our brains can tell the subtle difference between the two, which was beneficial for our evolution.) ~ Michio Kaku

Memories are like that. They live between synapses and between the people who hold them. Memories, even epic ones, are perishable from their very formation even in people who don't soak their brains in mood-altering chemicals. There is only so much space on any one person's hard drive, and old memories are prone to replacement by newer ones. ~ David Carr