Popular quotes about Brains! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 66
Each of us plays four roles in relation to the brain. We lead, we inspire, we invent, and we use it. Most people do not actively use their brains. They passively let their feelings and thoughts control their lives. They don't invent new ways to use their brains, either, settling instead for the same routine and repetitive thoughts every day. But if you master all four roles, you create your super brain. When you are the active observer of your feelings and thoughts, you become the user of your brain. Your super brain then serves you, not vice versa.
Deepak ChopraHe who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves that he has no brains of his own.
Charles SpurgeonIt is not so much that we, using our brains, spin our yarns, as that our brains, using yarns, spin us.
Daniel DennettTime 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.
Richard DawkinsThere are writers who can show you the excellence of their brains and writers who show you the depths of their souls: I don't know any writer who does both at the same time as brilliantly as Roxane Gay.
Elizabeth McCrackenMy son has few friends and even fewer who know him for what he is. So long as you protect him, you live. Sumerian or not. But if you prove false in anything youโve said here today, I will bring a wrath down on you so sever that you will spend eternity trying to dig out your own brains to alleviate the pain of it. (Apollymi)
Sherrilyn KenyonThere must be a marsh in the brains of these men or there would not be so many frogs of wrong ideas gathered in their heads.
Mehmet Murat IldanWhat do you know about women?" They smell nice, they don't like to be told they can't do something, and, when they're naked, they hold some sort of mystical power that overrides our brains and makes us do and say things that would normally be inconceivable.
Katie MacAlisterSay and do something positive that will help the situation; it doesn't take any brains to complain.
Robert A. CookWhat 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.
William LawIt is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them โ the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.
Fyodor DostoevskyHumans evolved brains that are pattern-recognition machines, adept at detecting signals that enhance or threaten survival amid a very noisy world. ... But there is only one surefire method of proper pattern recognition, and that is science.
Michael ShermerUnlike any other nation, here the people rule, and their will is the supreme law. It is sometimes sneeringly said by those who do not like free government, that here we count heads. True, heads are counted, but brains also . . .
William McKinleyOur riches, being in our brains, die with us... Unless of course someone chops off our head, in which case, we won't need them anyway.
Wolfgang Amadeus MozartFor centuries, magicians have intuitively taken advantage of the inner workings of our brains.
Neil deGrasse TysonLet me tell you, though: being the smartest boy in the world wasnโt easy. I didnโt ask for this. I didnโt want this. On the contrary, it was a huge burden. First, there was the task of keeping my brain perfectly protected. My cerebral cortex was a national treasure, a masterpiece of the Sistine Chapel of brains. This was not something that could be treated frivolously. If I could have locked it in a safe, I would have. Instead, I became obsessed with brain damage.
A. J. JacobsThe arts open your heart and mind to possibilities that are limitless. They are pathways that touch upon our brains and emotions and bring sustenance to imagination. Human beings' greatest form of communication, they walk in tandem with science and play, and best describe what it is to be human.
Jacques d'AmboiseI wouldn't have raced a horse. But you'll then throw back at me that Jesse Owens raced against a horse and he's one of my heroes so I'm not going to say it was a silly stunt. I know too much about horses. They're highly unreliable and they've got brains the size of golf balls.
Sebastian Coewhat sphinx of cement and aluminium bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination
Allen GinsbergIt was Lorraine in her nightie and Mo in his cap. They'd just settled their brains for a long winter's nap in front of the television. When out in the lot there arose such a clatter, they sprang from their recliners to see what was the matter. Away to the window they flew like a flash, tore open the blinds and threw up the sash. And what to their wondering eyes should appear, but Stephanie Plum and yet another of her cars burning front to rear.
Janet EvanovichYour assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while or the light won't come in. If you challenge your own, you won't be so quick to accept the unchallenged assumptions of others. You'll be a lot less likely to be caught up in bias or prejudice or be influenced by people who ask you to hand over your brains, your soul or your money because they have everything all figured out for you.
Alan AldaWe 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.
Richard DawkinsWe have more than enough resources in the world. The only thing we don't have is brains in Washington.
Jacque FrescoWe 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 ThomasI shall take the heart. For brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world.
L. Frank BaumJust 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 MoningThe most prudent thing any intelligent animal can do, if it would prefer its descendents not to spend a lot of time on a slab with electrodes clamped to their brains or sticking mines on the bottom of ships, or being patronised by zoologists, is to make bloody certain humans don't find out about it.
Terry PratchettOften people with fine countenances and fit bodies were mistakenly assumed by others to have the brains to match.
J.R. WardI 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.
E. L. KonigsburgIt's awful undermining to the intellect, German is; you want to take it in small doses, or first you know your brains all run together, and you feel them flapping around in your head same as so much drawn butter.
Mark TwainWork addiction seems to be an addiction we are proud of. We almost seem to brag with mock displeasure that we are "overwhelmed" with busyness, sometimes as an excuse for not really being able to do what we really want to be doing. Work addiction is a symptom not of working your brains out but of your brain working you out. Why are you doing what you're doing for a career and how do you like doing it? Do you like your answer?
Paul PearsallIts big men are mostly little men with fancy offices and a lot of money. A great many of them are stupid little men, with reach-me-down brains, small-town arrogance and a sort of animal knack of smelling out the taste of the stupidest part of the public. They have played in luck so long that they have come to mistake luck for enlightenment." - on Hollywood
Raymond ChandlerI think of myself as a social scientist. In order to get hired and to get promoted, we're forced to declare a disciplinary and sub-disciplinary specialty, so I am a psychologist and I am a social psychologist within that. But I think the exciting thing is to think about the social sciences in general and the nature of society. It's one of the hardest things to think about, because our brains aren't designed to think about these emergent entities. We're not good at it.
Jonathan HaidtIf 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.
George Bernard ShawThe victors of the battles of tomorrow will be those who can best harness thought to action. From office boy to statesman, the prizes will be for those who most effectively exert their brains, who take deep, earnest and studious counsel of their minds, who stamp themselves as thinkers.
B. C. ForbesGentlemen ... Do you not see that so long as society says a woman is incompetent to be a lawyer, minister or doctor, but has ample ability to be a teacher, that every man of you who chooses this profession tacitly acknowledges that he has no more brains than a woman?
Susan B. AnthonyLeaving 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 EvansNo longer can we afford to stuff the brains of the young with facts. The time is too short, the necessity for results too pressing. The new education must be based on the elimination of facts except as they illustrate principles. How to use facts, not how to accumulate them, is the purpose of true education.
Pearl S. BuckI'm deadly serious even when I play tennis against my kids. I want to beat their brains out.
Jack NicklausThe Ten Commandments are for lame brains. The first five are solely for the benefit of the priests and the powers that be; the second five are half truths, neither complete nor adequate.
Robert A. HeinleinI'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 BullockOctopuses have hundreds of suckers, each one equipped with its own ganglion with thousands of neurons. These 'mini-brains' are interconnected, making for a widely distributed nervous system. That is why a severed octopus arm may crawl on its own and even pick up food.
Frans de WaalI always tried to be open-minded, but not so open-minded that my brains would fall out. As G. K. Chesterton says, "The purpose of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to close it again on something solid." I opened my mind, and I finally closed it on the most solid reality I had ever experienced. On December 19, 1959, at 8:30PM, during my second year at the university, I became a Christian.
Josh McDowell