Popular quotes about Brains! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 25
Our visual cortexes are wired to quickly recognize faces and then quickly subtract massive amounts of detail from them, zeroing in on their essential message: Is this person happy? Angry? Fearful? Individual faces may vary greatly, but a smirk on one is a lot like a smirk on another. Smirks are conceptual, not pictorial. Our brains are like cartoonists - and cartoonists are like our brains, simplifying and exaggerating, subordinating facial detail to abstract comic concepts.
Jonathan FranzenIf minds are wholly dependent on brains and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees.
C. S. LewisThere are brains so large that they unconsciously swamp all individualities ties which come in contact or too near, and brains so small that they cannot take in the conception of any other individuality as a whole, only in part or parts.
Anna Brownell JamesonOne of the most impressive features of brains - and especially human brains - is the flexibility to learn almost any kind of task that comes its way.
David EaglemanSociopaths differ fairly dramatically in how their brains react to emotional words. An emotional word is love, hate, anger, mom, death, anything that we associate with an emotional reaction. We are wired to process those words more readily than neutral, nonemotional words. We are very emotional creatures. But sociopaths listen as evenly to emotional words as they do to lamp or book - there's no neurological difference.
Martha StoutIt's the quintessential Greek sport: harmonious, competitive, agonizing, nautical, and above all, intelligent. It combines Odysseus's brains and brawn and love of the sea with the tactical precision of the Spartan pikeman.
Barry S. StraussThey hadnโt counted on the highly controlled jabberjay having the brains to adapt to the wild, to pass on its genetic code, to thrive in a new form. They hadnโt anticipated its will to live.
Suzanne CollinsI'm scared of myself. I think I'd be a bad driver. I'm scared of cars, period. I've had too many friends killed now, and I've seen too many people killed in my life when I drove across the country when I was 12. I'm sure that has a lot to do with it. If you see a few real dead bodies with brains on the pavement, it does a lot to change your attitude. It means you can get it too. I've had a lot of relatives killed. I've had a lot of dear friends killed. It's stupid. The whole activity is stupid.
Ray BradburyIt really doesn't take brains to be a politician as much as it takes stomach. Both would be nice, but in America we have accepted diminishing returns in this arena.
Rita Mae BrownA person's tragedy does not make up their entire life. A story carves deep grooves into our brains each time we tell it. But we aren't one story. We can change our stories. We can write our own.
Amy PoehlerYou hear stories about me beating my brains out practising, but the truth is, I was enjoying myself. I couldn't wait to get up in the morning, so I could hit balls. When I'm hitting the ball where I want, hard and crisply, it's a joy that very few people experience.
Ben HoganWomen of genius commonly have masculine faces, figures and manners. In transplanting brains to an alien soil God leaves a little of the original earth clinging to the roots.
Ambrose BierceLiterature and the other arts play with pattern - our brains understand our world by recognizing patterns - and with possibility. The arts harness our sharpest senses, sight and sound, and our richest ways of understanding, in language and narrative. They were our first schools before schools were ever invented. They develop our imaginations, extend our possibilities, and deepen what we can all share.
Brian BoydThe book, I think, like the map before it, like the clock, created or help create a revolution in the human mind in the way our habits of mind and ultimately the way we use our brains.
Nicholas G. CarrFifty years ago, the way that we consumed food was revolutionized. We began eating processed foods, and it seemed amazing. And then we woke up many decades later, and we realized that food was engineered to make us fat. And I think that such companies as Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple are doing the same thing with the stuff that we ingest through our brains. They're attempting to addict us, and they're addicting us on the basis of data.
Franklin FoerThe ugliest thing in the world is a beautiful woman without the brains or courage to know that [beauty] is nothing more than an accident.
Charlie FletcherThe truth is that brains have little to do with either the making or accumulating of money.
Clarence DarrowWe pass thoughts around, from mind to mind, so compulsively and with such speed that the brains of mankind often appear, functionally, to be undergoing fusion.
Lewis ThomasAll through my life I never did believe in human measurement. Numbers, time, inches, feet. All are just ploys for cutting nature down to size. I know the grand scheme of the world is beyond our brains to fathom, so I don't try, just let it in.
Louise ErdrichI shall take the heart. For brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world.
L. Frank BaumWe manipulate nature as if we were stuffing an Alsatian goose. We create new forms of energy; we make new elements; we kill crops; we wash brains. I can hear them in the dark sharpening their lasers.
Erwin ChargaffJust saying, things ain't always bad just 'cause you don't understand 'em or ain't like 'em. That's like thinking anybody who's smarter or faster is dangerous just 'cause they got more brains or quicker feet. Ain't fair. Peeps can't help how they're born.
Karen Marie MoningOften people with fine countenances and fit bodies were mistakenly assumed by others to have the brains to match.
J.R. WardI can state with complete assurance that for each of us our brains form the material basis of our experiences and memories, our imaginations, our dreams.
John EcclesFor a girl, appearance can be a powerful form of oppression. No matter how intelligent a girl may be, no matter her many talents, these attributes are not easily discerned. Brains and talent will never stand up against a girl who is clearly physically attractive.
Natsuo KirinoThere's a good case to be made that having fun is a key evolutionary advantage right next to opposable thumbs in terms of importance. Without that little chemical twist in our brains that makes us enjoy learning new things, we might be more like the sharks and ants of the world.
Raph KosterWhile our behavior is still significantly controlled by our genetic inheritance, we have, through our brains, a much richer opportunity to blaze new behavioral and cultural pathways on short timescales.
Carl SaganAnd stop talking in that puffed-up way they taught you. Words aren't brains, you know.
Deepak ChopraThe human mind has a desire to know its place in the universe and the role we play in the tapestry of life. This is actually hardwired into our brains, the desire the know our relationship to the universe. This was good for our evolution, since it enabled us to see our relationship to others and to nature which was good for our survival. And it is also what drives our curiosity to understand the universe.
Michio KakuIt has been said that he who was the first to abuse his fellow-man instead of knocking out his brains without a word, laid thereby the basis of civilisation.
John Hughlings JacksonLeaving aside the mysteries and the inequities of human talent, brains, taste, and reputations, the matter of art in photography may come down to this: it is the capture and projection of the delights of seeing; it is the defining of observation full and felt.
Walker EvansYou don't have to just hit nails with hammers, you know; you can use a hammer to beat somebody's brains in, to make armor or break a car window. You can do all kinds of things with your instrument outside of its surface purpose. My bass is my crutch but the best crutch I could have.
Stephen BrunerFree love? as if love is anything but free. Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love.
Emma GoldmanWith so many mind-bytes to be downloaded, so many mental codons to be replicated, it is no wonder that child brains are gullible, open to almost any suggestion, vulnerable to subversion, easy prey to Moonies, Scientologists and nuns. Like immune-deficient patients, children are wide open to mental infections that adults might brush off without effort.
Richard DawkinsMuch as I cared for Joseph Kennedy, he was a classic example of that person in the arts with lots of brains and drive but little taste or talent.
Gloria SwansonHumbly to ask a favour of people who are on the point of knocking your brains out sometimes produces good results.
Samuel BeckettWe need to be strong in order to avoid war; and to win. A politician looks forward only to the next election. A statesman looks forward to the next generation. Any person who is over 30 and is not a conservative, has no brains.
Winston ChurchillBy the time we get to the 2040s, we'll be able to multiply human intelligence a billionfold. That will be a profound change that's singular in nature. Computers are going to keep getting smaller and smaller. Ultimately, they will go inside our bodies and brains and make us healthier, make us smarter.
Ray KurzweilI think that human beings have gotten as far as we've gotten because of our adaptability, our ability to adapt, and our ability to dovetail our technologies - our brains to our tools. With the Industrial Revolution, we transcended the limits of our muscles. With the digital revolution, we transcend the limits of our minds.
Jason SilvaYour brain, Peekay, has two functions; it is a place for original thought, but also it is a reference library. Use it to tell you where to look, and then you will have for yourself all the brains that have ever been
Bryce CourtenayJapan had a more radical experience of future shock than any other nation in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. They were this feudal place, locked in the past, but then they bought the whole Industrial Revolution kit from England, blew their cultural brains out with it, became the first industrialized Asian nation, tried to take over their side of the world, got nuked by the United States for their trouble, and discovered Steve McQueen! Their take on iconic menswear emerges from that matrix.
William GibsonIt's easier for our brains to have a list of rules and say, "If we keep these rules, we're in, and if we don't keep these rules, we're out." The problem with grace is that it doesn't play by the rules. It covers sin, and it washes away shame. It releases you from self-hatred. You then realize, through grace in Jesus, and believing in Jesus, and agreeing with Jesus, that you evidently were worth dying for.
Mark LowryLet me explain something to you, he said. If you want to get something out of a man, dashing out his brains against a lamppost isn't the way to do it.
Loretta ChaseI maintain that the human mystery is incredibly demeaned by scientific reductionism, with its claim in promissory materialism to account eventually for all of the spiritual world in terms of patterns of neuronal activity. This belief must be classed as a superstition. ... We have to recognize that we are spiritual beings with souls existing in a spiritual world as well as material beings with bodies and brains existing in a material world.
John Eccles