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I realized, "Oh my gosh! I'm having a stroke!" And the next thing my brain says to me is, Wow! This is so cool! How many brain scientists have the opportunity to study their own brain from the inside out?"
Jill Bolte TaylorThis cell belongs to a brain, and it is my brain, the brain of me who is writing; and the cell in question, and within it the atom in question, is in charge of my writing, in a gigantic minuscule game which nobody has yet described. It is that which at this instant, issuing out of a labyrinthine tangle of yeses and nos, makes my hand run along a certain path on the paper, mark it with these volutes that are signs: a double snap, up and down, between two levels of energy, guides this hand of mine to impress on the paper this dot, here, this one.
Primo LeviMen should not labor foolishly like brutes, but the brain and the body should always, or as much as possible, work and rest together, and then the work will be of such a kind that when the body is hungry the brain will be hungry also, and the same food will suffice for both; otherwise the food which repairs the waste energy of the overwrought body will oppress the sedentary brain, and the degenerate scholar will come to esteem all food vulgar, and all getting a living drudgery.
Henry David ThoreauA Russian cosmonaut and a Russian brain surgeon were once discussing Christianity. The brain surgeon was a Christian, but the cosmonaut wasnโt. โI have been in outer space many times,โ bragged the cosmonaut, โbut I have never seen any angels.โ The brain surgeon stared in amazement, but then he said, โAnd I have operated on many intelligent brains, but I have never seen a single thought.
Jostein GaarderI've found is that by doing stand-up, I've actually learned how to combat depression. I don't have clinical, but I've definitely had my bouts with it. I just figured out that it's a choice. You're in control of your brain. When your brain is sending you bad information or bad thoughts, you can decide to go to the gym, or write a new joke - or if you're on the road, go to a ball game... something that's going to get the blood going. Or you can let those thoughts take you right down the rabbit hole.
Bill BurrTechnical advisor. Since you know our enemies so well, weโre going to pick your brain. (Jericho) Iโll tell you what you want to know. There's no need to torture me for it. (Asmodeus) Pick your brain is an idiomatic expression, Asmodeus. It means weโll have you tell us things. Weโre not actually going in there to mess with your head. (Delphine) Oh, thank the Source. I canโt stand it when someone opens my skull. It really hurts. (Asmodeus)
Sherrilyn KenyonMan does not have the right to develop his own mind. This kind of liberal orientation has great appeal. We must electrically control the brain. Some day armies and generals will be controlled by electrical stimulation of the brain.
Jose Manuel Rodriguez DelgadoWhile there have been great technological advances in the study of the brain, yielding enormous amounts of data on its physical and psychological characteristics, the old problem of relating mind to brain in a reasonable fashion remains unaccomplished.
Michael GazzanigaWith the advent of digital imaging I made the transition from trying to figure out how to do things to creating objects, characters and the whole cloth. It kind of freed up the analytical part of my brain and I had the opportunity to use more of the creative side of my brain for how things interact with light and integrate into stories.
John DykstraWhat specialists try to do is get at least three imaging processes that are totally different from each other. Then you can run these through a computer program and make a composite image. In one scenario you suspect a brain tumor, so you image the brain tumor with PET scans, MRIs, and CT scans and create a 3D model. The doctor opens up the skull to excise the cancer, but they can't see anything. Do you cut out what's supposed to be in that spot or not? The current story is yes, you believe the images over what you see with your eyes.
Don IhdeThe brain processes meaning before detail. Providing the gist, the core concept, first was like giving a thirsty person a tall glass of water. And the brain likes hierarchy. Starting with general concepts naturally leads to explaining information in a hierarchical fashion. You have to do the general idea first. And then you will see that 40 percent improvement in understanding.
John MedinaWhat I mean by Socialism is a condition of society in which there should be neither rich nor poor, neither master nor master's man, neither idle nor overworked, neither brainยญslack brain workers, nor heartยญsick hand workers, in a word, in which all men would be living in equality of condition, and would manage their affairs unwastefully, and with the full consciousness that harm to one would mean harm to all - the realisation at last of the meaning of the word 'commonwealth.'
William MorrisWhen I look at the human brain I'm still in awe of it. Every single time you lift off the bone and open the durra and there it is - the human brain, the thing that gives a person a personality, that distinguishes each one of us, that there could be more than 6 billion of us here on this planet with brains that look the same, but each one being distinctly different because of what is going on in that thing. I'll never get over my awe of that.
Benjamin CarsonI write letters to my right brain all the time. They're just little notes. And right brain, who likes to get little notes from me, will often come through within a day or two.
Sue GraftonPornographic or erotic stories and pictures are worse than filthy or polluted food. The body has defenses to rid itself of unwholesome food. With a few fatal exceptions, bad food will only make you sick but do no permanent harm. In contrast, a person who feasts upon filthy stories or pornographic or erotic pictures and literature records them in this marvelous retrieval system we call a brain. The brain won't vomit back filth. Once recorded, it will always remain subject to recall, flashing its perverted images across your mind and drawing you away from the wholesome things in life.
Dallin H. OaksMy friend had a brilliant idea. This impressed me. It reflected an immense deal of credit on his brain. But when he expressed it,it lost all value, and enjoyed but a commonplace status. My friend blamed this devaluation on the language. "I hate English," he said. So he studied another language. He mastered it so perfectly that there was no room left in his brain for a brilliant idea. Now he has a grudge against words. He refuses to use them. He prefers to shrug or grunt. A new crop of ideas is growing. They show promise of future refinement.
Marvin L. CohenGet in the habit of writing down three things you're grateful for every day. Studies show that in a two-minute span of time, done over 21 days in a row, you can actually rewire your brain. Your brain starts to retain a pattern of scanning the world for the positive versus the negative. Seeing things in a frame of positivity and gratitude is a muscle. You can strengthen this muscle through practice.
Amy ChanI think my hight had the most significant single effect on my existence, aside from my brain. In fact, it's part of an inferior-superior syndrome. I think I have an inferior brain and an inferior stature, if you really want to get brutal about it.
Paul SimonThe brain is a mystery; it has been and still will be. How does the brain produce thoughts? That is the central question and we have still no answer to it.
Charles Scott SherringtonThe brain isn't like the heart. They learned how to transplant a heart. The brain is more complex.
Adam AntThere is something at the bottom of every new human thought, every thought of genius, or even every earnest thought that springs up in any brain, which can never be communicated to others, even if one were to write volumes about it and were explaining one's idea for thirty-five years; there's something left which cannot be induced to emerge from your brain, and remains with you forever; and with it you will die, without communicating to anyone perhaps the most important of your ideas.
Fyodor DostoevskyYou can't *discover* that the brain is a digital computer. You can only *interpret* the brain as a digital computer.
John SearleCross out as many adjectives and adverbs as you can. ... It is comprehensible when I write: "The man sat on the grass," because it is clear and does not detain one's attention. On the other hand, it is difficult to figure out and hard on the brain if I write: "The tall, narrow-chested man of medium height and with a red beard sat down on the green grass that had already been trampled down by the pedestrians, sat down silently, looking around timidly and fearfully." The brain can't grasp all that at once, and art must be grasped at once, instantaneously.
Anton ChekhovThere's certainly a portion of my brain that is always tuned to making wry observations about the world, but that portion of my brain was alive and well before Twitter.
Roxane GayBrain wave tests prove that when we use positive words, our "feel good" hormones flow. Positive self-talk releases endorphins and serotonin in our brain, which then flow throughout our body, making us feel good. These neurotransmitters stop flowing when we use negative words.
Ruth FishelBell Labs Cafeteria, New York, 1943: His high pitched voice already stood out above the general murmur of well-behaved junior executives grooming themselves for promotion within the Bell corporation. Then he was suddenly heard to say: "No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I'm after is just a mediocre brain, something like the President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company."
Alan TuringThe brain cannot multitask. Multitasking, when it comes to paying attention, is a myth. The brain naturally focuses on concepts sequentially, one at a timeโฆTo put it bluntly, research shows that we canโt multitask. We are biologically incapable of processing information-rich inputs simultaneouslyโฆStudies show that a person who is interrupted takes 50 percent longer to accomplish a task. Not only that, he or she makes up to 50 percent more errors.
John MedinaMen ought to know that from the brain and from the brain only arise our pleasures, joys, laughter, and jests as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs and tears. ... It is the same thing which makes us mad or delirious, inspires us with dread and fear, whether by night or by day, brings us sleeplessness, inopportune mistakes, aimless anxieties, absent-mindedness and acts that are contrary to habit.
HippocratesI find that the creative side of my brain and the archival side of my brain don't work well together. When I've done my best work, I've been in a trance-like state.
George MeyerPain is the body's way of telling the brain it's in trouble. Similarly, confusion is the brain's way of telling the body, 'All right, buddy, drop that book.
Stephen ColbertIf you meet somebody and are attracted to someone, and the exquisite neurons in your brain and her brain intermesh properly, then things can be wonderful. It's not like homework. You don't have to work at the relationship.
Woody AllenYour brain at positive is 31% more productive than your brain at negative, neutral or stressed.
Shawn AchorThe brain is the last and grandest biological frontier, the most complex thing we have yet discovered in our universe. It contains hundreds of billions of cells interlinked through trillions of connections. The brain boggles the mind.
James D. WatsonWhat we found was that rather than being haphazardly arranged or independent pathways, we find that all of the pathways of the brain taken together fit together in a single exceedingly simple structure. They basically look like a cube. They basically run in three perpendicular directions, and in each one of those three directions the pathways are highly parallel to each other and arranged in arrays. So, instead of independent spaghettis, we see that the connectivity of the brain is, in a sense, a single coherent structure.
Ray KurzweilJust as important as getting enough sleep is thinking about sleep in the right way. Stop thinking of sleep and naps as โdowntimeโ or as a โwaste of time.โ Think of them as opportunities for memory consolidation and enhancing the brain circuits that help skill learning. Nor should you feel guilty about sleep. It's just as crucial a part of successful brain work as the actual task itself.
Richard RestakThe hardest thing in golf is trying to two-putt when you have to, because your brain isn't wired that way. You're accustomed to trying to make putts, and when you change that mind-set, your brain short-circuits, especially under pressure.
Ken VenturiEvery brain is wired differently from every other brain, and learns in ways unique to that wiring.
John MedinaWhatever the occasion, do not neglect alcohol. No other refreshment will do. Yes, alcohol kills brain cells, but it's very selective. It only kills the brain cells that contain good sense, shame, embarrassment, and restraint.
P. J. O'RourkeHow is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.
Alan WattsWhen you deal with something like compassion for physical pain, which we know is very, very old in evolution - we can find evidence for it in nonhuman species - the brain processes it at a faster speed. Compassion for mental pain took many seconds longer.
Antonio DamasioBilly was fascinated by the television. At its most basic level, it occupied his time and shut out the demons of isolation. This was another irony because, for so long, he had shunned the tube for a similar purpose-to prevent it from bombarding his brain with demons of banality. However, each time he turned the machine on, he began to discover a world of assorted delights, as well as gain insight into the insidious manner in which this medium was shaping the mass psyche. If nothing else, he learned there was nothing innocuous about it.
Jim CarrollIt is possible to be a fan of reality TV, talent shows and bubblegum pop and still have a brain. You will also see that a great many people know perfectly well how silly and camp and trivial their fandom is. They do not check in their minds when they enter a fan site. Judgement is not necessarily fled to brutish beasts, and men have not quite lost their reason. Which is all a way of questioning whether pop-culture hero worship is really so psychically damaging, so erosive of cognitive faculties, so corrupting of the soul of mankind as we are so often told.
Stephen FryWe must admit that the divine banquet of the brain was, and still is, a feast with dishes that remain elusive in the blending, and with sauces whose ingredients are even now a secret.
Macdonald CritchleyThe way I miss my daughter Esme is to worry about her. It is not a pleasurable longing. It contorts my body and scrambles my brain, makes me stop breathing, clench my jaw and my fists, it makes me frown, and makes me blind and deaf, in fact entirely without sensory perception.
Olivia WilliamsThe most important, the longest lasting, the strongest emotional, and the most practiced memories are the ones that are embedded the deepest in the brain, and because we have retrieved them so many times previously, they are the most able to be retrieved. We all hear about people who can remember their youth, their phone number, or street address from 70 years ago, but they cannot recall what they had for breakfast. The memory of this morning's breakfast wasn't rehearsed, and wasn't very important, so it fades away quickly.
Daniel LevitinThe thinnest I've ever been was after I had my appendix out, during the London run of The Seagull. I went down to 112 pounds and realized my brain doesn't work when I'm that thin, so I can't do my job. That's why, when I came out here, I never had that whole Hollywood pressure thing. I never said I wanted to be a lead actress; I never said I wanted to be a film actress. This need to trump everyone bewilders me. I'm only 25. I'm not better than anyone. I just want to watch other people and learn to be good.
Carey Mulligan