Quotes About Brains

From study of known normal brains we have learned that there is a certain range of variation. No two brains are exactly alike, and the greatest source of error in the assertions of Benedict and Lombroso has been the finding of this or that variation in a criminal's brains, and maintaining such to be characteristic of the 'criminal constitution,' unmindful of the fact that like variations of structure may and do exist in the brains of normal, moral persons.

I think our brains does have a tendency to be true to its own ideas and statements. Everything we do and everything we think about is a belief. Until we get to the point where we look beyond our own ego-self, and to some degree beyond our own mind, we are always going to make assumptions and have beliefs to make our brains feel more comfortable. And if we can get to a point where we embrace that uncertainty and doubt, and be willing to learn from that and to explore that, I think that that could be a very positive experience.

Time and again, my sociobiological colleagues have upbraided me as a turncoat, because I will not agree with them that the ultimate criterion for the success of a meme must be its contribution to Darwinian "fitness". At bottom, they insist, a "good meme" spreads because brains are receptive to it, and the receptiveness of brains is ultimately shaped by (genetic) natural selection.

The grim possibility is that she who 'hides her brains' will, more than likely, end up with a mate who is only equal to a woman with 'hidden brains' or none at all.

The self-same atoms which, chaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, jammed and temporarily caught in peculiar positions, form our brains; and the 'evolution' of brains, if understood, would be simply the account of how the atoms came to be so caught and jammed.

A good reliable set of bowels is worth more to a man than any quantity of brains.

I am thinking,’ he remarked quietly, ’whether I shall add to the disorder in this room, by scattering your brains about the fireplace.

Nations do not think, they only feel. They get their feelings at second hand through their temperaments, not their brains. A nation can be brought -- by force of circumstances, not argument -- to reconcile itself to any kind of government or religion that can be devised; in time it will fit itself to the required conditions; later it will prefer them and will fiercely fight for them.

Words are not brains, you know.

It 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.

What can you conceive more silly and extravagant than to suppose a man racking his brains, and studying night and day how to fly? ... wearying himself with climbing upon every ascent, ... bruising himself with continual falls, and at last breaking his neck? And all this, from an imagination that it would be glorious to have the eyes of people looking up at him, and mighty happy to eat, and drink, and sleep, at the top of the highest trees in the kingdom.

It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them — the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.

The principal activities of brains are making changes in themselves.

Celebrities meet a lot of people and we just can't maintain them all in our fuddled brains.

Those who grew up digital have different brains.

Travel makes the world look new, and when the world looks new, our brains work harder.

Whether consciousness is implanted in us by something divine, or whether it is created by the efforts of our brains, the end result is the same. We are.

For years I stopped reading beauty magazines because I couldn't look at one without wanting to blow my brains out. How can those women look so good?

Dance involves physicality, it involves spirituality and even brains.

Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men or they are no better than dreams.

We have sexual lust even though we know perfectly well that, because we're using contraception, it is not going to result in the propagation of our genes. That doesn't matter, because the lust was built into our brains at a time when there was no contraception.

Most women use more brains picking a horse in the third at Belmont than they do picking a husband

There are the those whose own vulgar normality is so apparent and stultifying that they strive to escape it. They affect flamboyant behaviour and claim originality according to the fashionable eccentricities of their time. They claim brains or talent or indifference to mores in desperate attempts to deny their own mediocrity.

I am convinced that not only do children need children's books to fine-tune their brains, but our civilization needs them if we are not going to unplug ourselves from our collective past.

Staff has a genius for sitting on its brains and coming up with perfect hindsight.

Our beliefs do not sit passively in our brains waiting to be confirmed or contradicted by incoming information. Instead, they play a key role in shaping how we see the world.

If at age 20 you are not a Communist then you have no heart. If at age 30 you are not a Capitalist then you have no brains.

These fingers of mine got brains in 'em.

In making our decisions, we must use the brains that God has given us. But we must also use our hearts, which He also gave us.

As for those wingy mysteries in divinity, and airy subtleties in religion, which have unhinged the brains of better heads, they never stretched the pia mater of mine; methinks there be not impossibilities enough in Religion for an active faith.

For God's sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself!

When we had to survive on our wits, gather and kill our food from scratch and be more at the mercy of our environment than we are today, we probably had enough challenge to keep our brains healthy.

Your brain gets too comfortable in your everyday surroundings. You need to make it uncomfortable. You need to spend some time in another land, among people that do things differently than you. Travel makes the world look new, and when the world looks new, our brains work harder.

[An audience conditioned by a lifetime of television-watching is so corrupted that] their standards have been systematically lowered over the years. These guys sit in front of their sets and the gamma rays eat the white cells of their brains out!

Maybe today we aren't being told that our brains are not capable of such things [like programming], but we [as a women] are being told that we are not good enough or smart enough or that our successes do not belong to us.

Companies fail for lack of brains and effort.

Far away, I could hear them lapping up my brains. Like Macbeth's witches, the three lithe cats surrounded my broken head, slurping up that thick soup inside. The tips of their rough tongues licked the soft folds of my mind. And with each lick my consciousness flickered like a flame and faded away.

Nothing to mountaineering, just a little physical endurance, a good deal of brains, lots of practice, and plenty of warm clothing.

It'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.

Freedom! To fill people's mailboxes, eyes, ears and brains with commercial rubbish against their will, television programs that are impossible to watch with a sense of coherence. Freedom! To force information on people, taking no account of their right not to accept it or their right of peace of mind. Freedom! To spit in the eyes and souls of passersby with advertisements.

I should, many a good day, have blown my brains out, but for the recollection that it would have given pleasure to my mother-in-law.

I guess politicians can be excused for thinking the electorate is stupid because they keep winning reelection. If you were Barbara Boxer or Harry Reid and you kept being reelected, you'd have to think, 'Half of my state is stupid.' But then you wouldn't be smart enough to think that if you had their brains.

We admit, in geometry, not only infinite magnitudes, that is to say, magnitudes greater than any assignable magnitude, but infinite magnitudes infinitely greater, the one than the other. This astonishes our dimension of brains, which is only about six inches long, five broad, and six in depth, in the largest heads.

The best brains of the nation may be found on the last benches of the classroom.

To count - really and truly to count - a woman must have goodness or brains.

Our brains are no longer conditioned for reverence and awe. We cannot imagine a Second Coming that would not be cut down to size by the televised evening news, or a Last Judgment not subject to pages of holier-than-thou second-guessing in The New York Review of Books.

The idea of a world commonweal has to be established as the criterion of political institutions, and also as the criterion of general conduct in hundreds of millions of brains. It has to dominate education everywhere in the world. When that end is achieved, then the world state will be achieved.

I would argue that if you understand how the cells of the brain are organized into circuits, almost computational circuits if you will, and we see how information flows through those circuits and how it's transformed, we might have a much firmer grasp on why our brains make decisions the way that they do. If we get a handle on that, maybe we can overcome some of our limitations and at the very least we'll understand why we do what we do.