Even though its common knowledge these days, it never ceases to amaze me that all the richness of our mental life - all our feelings, our emotions, our thoughts, our ambitions, our love life, our religious sentiments and even what each of us regards us his own intimate private self - is simply the activity of these little specks of jelly in your head, in your brain. There is nothing else.

Great art allows you to transcend your mortal frame and to reach for the stars. I think great science does the same thing.

Any ape can reach for a banana, but only humans can reach for the stars.

You cant just take an image and randomly distort it and call it art - although many people in La Jolla where I come from do precisely that.

The adage that fact is stranger than fiction seems to be especially true for the workings of the brain.

Here is a neuron that fires when I reach and grab something, but it also fires when I watch Joe reaching and grabbing something. ... It's as though this neuron is adopting the other person's point of view.

If we knew about the real facts and statistics of mortality, we’d be terrified.