Quote

A genius is somebody who seemingly just reaches out of nowhere.

Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: August 10
Academic
Neurologist
Pedagogue
Psychologist
Scientist
Writer
Rykove
V. S. Ramachandran
V S Ramachandran
Genius
Somebody
Seemingly
Reaches
Nowhere

More quotes by Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

Image
People often ask how I got interested in the brain my rhetorical answer is: 'How can anyone NOT be interested in it?' Everything you call 'human nature' and consciousness arises from it.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Image
Yet as human beings we have to accept-with humility-that the question of ultimate origins will always remain with us, no matter how deeply we understand the brain and the cosmos that it creates.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Image
What the artist tries to do (either consciously or unconsciously) is to not only capture the essence of something but also to amplify it in order to more powerfully activate the same neural mechanisms that would be activated by the original object.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Image
There is no real independent self, aloof from other human beings, inspecting the world, inspecting other people. You are, in fact, connected not just via Facebook and Internet, you're actually quite literally connected by your neurons.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Image
In the fetus, or a really young child, all the different brain areas are connected to each other, diffusely. And as the brain develops, the excess connections are turned off, so you get very specialized areas. So most people have really specialized talents. What happens in creative people is this pooling doesn't take place.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Image
Great art allows you to transcend your mortal frame and to reach for the stars. I think great science does the same thing.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Image
Remember that politics, colonialism, imperialism and war also originate in the human brain.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Image
With the arrival of humans, it has been said, the universe has suddenly become conscious of itself. This, truly, it the greatest mystery of all.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Image
What the neurology tells us is that the self consists of many components, and the notion of one unitary self may well be an illusion.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Image
Here is this three-pound mass of jelly you can hold in the palm of your hand, and it can contemplate the vastness of interstellar space. It can contemplate the meaning of infinity and it can contemplate itself contemplating on the meaning of infinity.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Image
Curiosity illuminates the correct path to anything in life. If you're not curious, that's when your brain is starting to die.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Image
What do we mean by knowledge or understanding? And how do billions of neurons achieve them? These are complete mysteries. Admittedly, cognitive neuroscientists are still very vague about the exact meaning of words like understand, think, and indeed the word meaning itself.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Image
There are 100 billion neurons in the adult human brain, and each neuron makes something like 1,000 to 10,000 contacts with other neurons in the brain. Based on this, people have calculated that the number of permutations and combinations of brain activity exceeds the number of elementary particles in the universe.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Image
People think of art and science as being fundamentally opposed to each other, because art is about celebrating individual human creativity, and science is about discovering general principles, not about individual people. But in fact, the two have a lot in common, and the creative spirit is similar in both.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Image
Our ability to perceive the world around us seems so effortless that we tend to take it for granted.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Image
Lofty questions about the mind are fascinating to ask, philosophers have been asking them for three millennia both in India where I am from and here in the West - but it is only in the brain that we can eventually hope to find the answers.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Image
Here is a neuron that fires when I reach and grab something, but it also fires when I watch Joe reaching and grabbing something. ... It's as though this neuron is adopting the other person's point of view.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Image
Without ducking responsibility, what's wrong with medicine today is that it is predicated on providing treatment, not on reducing suffering. Not on solving problems.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Image
The visual system of the brain has the organization, computational profile, and architecture it has in order to facilitate the organism's thriving at the four Fs: feeding fleeing, fighting, and reproduction.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Image
The minute you succumb to outside pressure, you cease to be creative.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran