Quote

Knowing yourself now requires the understanding that the conscious you occupies only a small room in the mansion of the brain, and that it has little control over the reality constructed for you.

David Eagleman

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

David Eagleman
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: April 25
Author
Neuroscientist
Psychologist
Researcher
University Teacher
Albuquerque
New Mexico
David M Eagleman
David Eagleman
Control
Mansion
Small
Occupies
Brain
Mansions
Knowing
Constructed
Understanding
Requires
Reality
Conscious
Littles
Room
Little
Rooms

More quotes by David Eagleman

Image
One of the most pervasive mistakes is to believe that our visual system gives a faithful representation of what is out there in the same way that a movie camera would.
David Eagleman
Image
The main thing known about secrets is that keeping them is unhealthy for the brain.
David Eagleman
Image
Many people prefer a view of human nature that includes a true side and a false side - in other words, humans have a single genuine aim and the rest is decoration, evasion, or cover-up. That's intuitive, but it's incomplete. A study of the brain necessitates a more nuanced view of human nature.
David Eagleman
Image
As we develop better technologies for probing the brain, we detect more problems.
David Eagleman
Image
Societies would _not_ be better off if everyone were like Mr Spock, all rationality and no emotion. Instead, a balance - a teaming up of the internal rivals - is optimal for brains. ... Some balance of the emotional and rational systems is needed, and that balance may already be optimized by natural selection in human brains.
David Eagleman
Image
As an undergraduate I majored in British and American literature at Rice University.
David Eagleman
Image
I know one lab that studies nicotine receptors and all the scientists are smokers, and another lab that studies impulse control and they're all overweight.
David Eagleman
Image
It is more parsimonious to assume that the sun goes around the Earth, that atoms at the smallest scale operate in accordance with the same rules that objects at larger scales follow, and that we perceive what is really out there. All of these positions were long defended by argument from parsimony, and they were all wrong.
David Eagleman
Image
There are always wonderful mysteries to confront.
David Eagleman
Image
You´re not perceiving what's out there. You're perceiving whatever your brain tells you.
David Eagleman
Image
Odor carries a great deal of information, including information about a potential mate's age, sex, fertility, identity, emotions, and health.
David Eagleman
Image
Instead of reality being passively recorded by the brain, it is actively constructed by it.
David Eagleman
Image
Everybody knows the power of deadlines - and we all hate them. But their effectiveness is undeniable.
David Eagleman
Image
Death... The moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.
David Eagleman
Image
We are not conscious of most things until we ask ourselves questions about them.
David Eagleman
Image
The deep secret of the brain is that not only the spinal cord but the entire central nervous system works this way: internally generated activity is modulated by sensory input. In this view, the difference between being awake and being asleep is merely that the data coming in from the eyes anchors the perception.
David Eagleman
Image
A mere 400 years after our fall from the center of the universe, we have experienced the fall from the center of ourselves.
David Eagleman
Image
All life is no more than a match struck in the dark and blown out again.
David Eagleman
Image
Modern neuroimaging is like asking an astronaut in the space shuttle to look out the window and judge how America is doing.
David Eagleman
Image
If our brains were simple enough to be understood, we wouldn't be smart enough to understand them.
David Eagleman