Your brain is most intelligent when you don’t instruct it on what to do — something people who take showers discover on occasion.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (b. 1960) Lebanese-American essayist, statistician, risk analyst, aphorist.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms, “Preludes” (2010)
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Quotations about:
brain
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
You must admit that it might be confusing to have one brain and two bodies.
Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) American writer
Synthetic Men of Mars, ch. 14 [Vor Daj] (1940)
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The Mediator between Brain and Hands must be the Heart.
[Der Mittler zwischen Hirn und Händen muss das Herz sein.]
Thea von Harbou (1888-1954) German screenwriter, novelist, film director, actress
Metropolis, ch. 5 [Maria] (1925) [tr. (1927)]
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The novel was written to be the basis for the film by Von Harbou's husband, Fritz Lang. She also collaborated with him on the script. The movie began shooting before the novel was published.
In talking with the growingly restless workers of the city, Maria adds, shortly after the above line:One will come, who will speak for you -- who will be the mediator between you, the Hands, and the man whose Brain and Will are over you all.
Von Harbau also included an epigraph at the beginning of the novel, which concludes (with a slightly different translation): "The mediator between brain and muscle must be the Heart."
Psychiatry is all biological and all social. there is no mental function without brain and social context. To ask how much of mind is biological and how much social is as meaningless as to ask how much of the area of a rectangle is due to its width and how much to its height, or how much of the phenotype is due to genes and how much to environment.
Leon Eisenberg (1922-2009) American psychiatrist and medical educator
“The social construction of the human brain,” American Journal of Psychiatry (Nov 1995)
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Many complain of their looks, but none of their brains.
(Other Authors and Sources)
Italian proverb
Also noted as a Jewish or Yiddish proverb.
This is also often cited to Sally Koslow, Little Pink Slips, ch. 5 (2007); it appears there as ""Many complain of their looks, few of their brains," but is described as an unoriginal needlepoint on a pillow cover.
See also La Rochefoucauld for a similar construction.
There is no more terrible woe upon earth than the woe of the stricken brain, which remembers the days of its strength, the living light of its reason, the sunrise of its proud intelligence, and knows that these have passed away like a tale that is told.
Ouida (1839-1908) English novelist [pseud. of Maria Louise Ramé]
Folle-Farine, Book 3, ch. 3 (1871)
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The human brain starts working the moment you are born and never stops until you stand up to speak in public.
George Jessel (1898-1981) American comedian, singer, songwriter, producer
Quoted in The Observer (7 Aug 1949)
Jessel was a frequent master of ceremonies, and often used the line. Variant: "The human brain is a wonderful thing. It starts working the moment you are born, and never stops until you stand up to speak in public."
More gold has been mined from the brains of men than has ever been taken from the earth.
Napoleon Hill (1883-1970) American author, motivational writer
Think and Grow Rich (1937)
(Source)
In some editions this is given as: "More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has ever been taken from the earth."
A man should keep his little brain-attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) British writer and physician
“The Five Orange Pips,” The Strand (Nov 1891)
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The brain is only three pounds of blood, dream, and electricity, and yet from that mortal stew come Beethoven’s sonatas. Dizzy Gillespie’s jazz. Audrey Hepburn’s wish to spend the last month of her life in Somalia, saving children.
Diane Ackerman (b. 1948) American poet, author, naturalist
A Natural History of Love, “Brain-Stem Sonata: The Neurophysiology of Love” (1994)
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Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.
John Adams (1735-1826) American lawyer, Founding Father, statesman, US President (1797-1801)
Letter to Josiah Quincy III (14 Feb 1825)
There is a large number of women whose brains are closer in size to the gorillas than to the most developed male brains. This inferiority is so obvious that no one can contest it for a moment; only its degree is worth discussion. All psychologists who have studied the intelligence of women … recognize today that they represent the most inferior forms of human evolution, and that they are closer to children and savages than to an adult, civilized man.
Gustave LeBon (1841-1931) German psychologist
Revue d’Anthropologie (1879)
I could wile away the hours
Conferrin’ with the flowers,
Consultin’ with the rain;
And my head I’d be scratchin’
While my thoughts were busy hatchin’,
If I only had a brain.E. Y. "Yip" Harburg (1896-1981) American lyricist [Edgar Yipsel Harburg, b. Isidore Hochberg]
“If I Only Had a Brain,” The Wizard of Oz (1939)
The only difference between me and most people is that I’m perfectly aware that all my important decisions are made for me by my subconscious. My frontal lobes are just kidding themselves that they decide anything at all. All they do is think up reasons for the decisions that are already made.
Rex Stout (1886-1975) American writer
In “Author Rex Stout vs. the FBI,” Interview with Sandra Schmidt, Life (10 Dec 1965)
“Rabbit’s clever,” said Pooh.
“Yes,” said Piglet. “Rabbit’s clever.”
“And he has a Brain.”
“Yes,” said Piglet, “Rabbit has a Brain.”
There was a long silence.
“I suppose,” said Pooh, “that’s why he never understands anything.”A. A. Milne (1882-1956) English poet and playwright [Alan Alexander Milne]
House at Pooh Corner, ch. 8 “Piglet Does a Very Grand Thing” (1928)
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