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1 " It is worth repeating at this point the theories that Ford had come up with, on his first encounter with human beings, to account for their peculiar habit of continually stating and restating the very very obvious, as in " It's a nice day," or " You're very tall," or " So this is it, we're going to die." His first theory was that if human beings didn't keep exercising their lips, their mouths probably shriveled up.After a few months of observation he had come up with a second theory, which was this--" If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, their brains start working. "
2 " The brain waves of ordinary people during insight experiences are unique. Their brains are in special states. "
― Laurie Nadel , Dr. Laurie Nadel's Sixth Sense: Unlocking Your Ultimate Mind Power
3 " As Mary delivered what was to be her last lecture about the Galapagos Islands, she would be stopped mid-sentence for five seconds by a doubt which, if expressed in words, might have come out something like this: " Maybe I'm just a crazy lady who had wandered off the street and into this classroom and started explaining the mysteries of life to these people. And they believe me, although I am utterly mistaken about simply everything." She had to wonder, too, about all the supposedly great teachers of the past, who, although their brains were healthy, had turned out to be as wrong as Roy about what was really going on. "
4 " An unbroken horse erects his mane, paws the ground and starts back impetuously at the sight of the bridle; while one which is properly trained suffers patiently even whip and spur: so savage man will not bend his neck to the yoke to which civilised man submits without a murmur, but prefers the most turbulent state of liberty to the most peaceful slavery. We cannot therefore, from the servility of nations already enslaved, judge of the natural disposition of mankind for or against slavery; we should go by the prodigious efforts of every free people to save itself from oppression. I know that the former are for ever holding forth in praise of the tranquillity they enjoy in their chains, and that they call a state of wretched servitude a state of peace: miserrimam servitutem pacem appellant. But when I observe the latter sacrificing pleasure, peace, wealth, power and life itself to the preservation of that one treasure, which is so disdained by those who have lost it; when I see free-born animals dash their brains out against the bars of their cage, from an innate impatience of captivity; when I behold numbers of naked savages, that despise European pleasures, braving hunger, fire, the sword and death, to preserve nothing but their independence, I feel that it is not for slaves to argue about liberty. "
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
5 " Americans by the very nature of the soft fat they collected around their brains along with all of their comforts, their total ignorance of historical meanings, their delusion that anarchists were either comic little men plotting nothings in a dark cellar or misunderstood cranks--how could Americans be taken seriously in a world of real politics? "
― Helen MacInnes , Decision at Delphi
6 " High magic requires a great clarity of thought, you see, and women's talents do not lie in that direction. Their brains tend to overheat. "
7 " Women will one day rule the world, and when they do, their brains will be so finely tuned from all the years of quiet that I anticipate they will be far superior rulers to men. "
― Samantha Hunt , The Invention of Everything Else
8 " It is astonishing what an effort it seems to be for many people to put their brains definitely and systematically to work. "
― Thomas A. Edison
9 " Jazz will endure as long as people hear it through their feet instead of their brains "
10 " James, you’d like Lou Reed,” Michael insisted. “He was bisexual.”Their laughter turned to coughs. They were all staring at me when I turned around. I told myself to relax.“Oh, yeah?” I said. “He doesn’t sound bisexual.”Michael just shook his head, but Ronan and Glenn smiled.“They did electroshock therapy on him when he was a teenager,” Michael said.“Electro-what?” said Glenn. “They electrocuted people?”“Kind of. They zapped their brains to alter their personalities. That’s how they tried to make gay people straight back then.”They all looked at me for a response.I shrugged. “So, he was bisexual? It worked halfway? "
― Kenneth Logan , True Letters from a Fictional Life
11 " Lucifer had been ranting his endless laundry list of complaints for forty-five minutes now, and Louhi still didn’t know exactly what she was supposed to apologize for. There was something about her plant having eaten his cape while he had been waiting, as for the rest… She wished she could read an immortal’s thoughts, but their brains were constructs, simulations… Which actually explained a lot. "
12 " Meditation has also been proven scientifically to untangle and rewire the neurological pathways in the brain that make up the conditioned personality. Buddhist monks, for example, have had their brains scanned by scientists as they sat still in deep altered states of consciousness invoked by transcendental meditation and the scientists were amazed at what they beheld. The frontal lobes of the monks lit up as bright as the sun! They were in states of peace and happiness the scientists had never seen before. Meditation invokes that which is known in neuroscience as neuroplasticity; which is the loosening of the old nerve cells or hardwiring in the brain, to make space for the new to emerge. Meditation, in this sense, is a fire that burns away the old or conditioned self, in the Bhagavad Gita, this is known as the Yajna;“All karma or effects of actions are completely burned away from the liberated being who, free from attachment, with his physical mind enveloped in wisdom (the higher self), performs the true spiritual fire rite. "
― Craig Krishna , The Labyrinth: Rewiring the Nodes in the Maze of your Mind
13 " Glory: I look around at this world you're so eager to be a part of and all I see is six billion lunatics looking for the fastest ride out. Who's not crazy? Look around, everyone's drinking, smoking, shooting up, shooting each other, or just plain screwing their brains out 'cause they don't want 'em anymore. I'm crazy? Honey, I'm the original one-eyed chicklet in the kingdom of the blind, 'cause at least I admit the world makes me nuts. "
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14 " Don't you make fun of me or my children! Some babies are premature. Mine were all postmature. That's why they're so smart. Their brains had longer to develop. "
― Jeannette Walls , The Glass Castle
15 " Parents raise children then grow old, and their children forget the things their old parents did for them, because their brains don’t remember before they grew selfish.There are buildings all over the world full of old people sitting around looking out of windows, full of hate for their selfish sons and daughters.And meanwhile, the selfish sons and daughters look out of their windows at their children playing and think how wonderful their unbreakable bond of love is between them and their children. "
― Craig Stone , How to Hide from Humans
16 " American housewives have not had their brains shot away, nor are they schizophrenic in the clinical sense. But if … the fundamental human drive is not the urge for pleasure or the satisfaction of biological needs, but the need to grow and to realize one’s full potential, their comfortable, empty, purposeless days are indeed cause for a nameless terror. "
― Betty Friedan , The Feminine Mystique
17 " Men! She could not understand why so many women feared them. Hadn't the gods made them with the most vulnerable part of their guts hanging right out of their bodies, like a misplaced bit of bowel? Kick them there and they curled up like snails. Caress them there and their brains melted. "
― Stephen King , Wizard and Glass (The Dark Tower, #4)
18 " Writers use both their blood and their brains to explore the darkest recesses of their pooling self. Writing allows us to harness the whimsy of the collaborative mind and body, pull our tissue apart like taffy, and expose the composition of our life sustaining organs. Telling our personal story forces us to account for any actions that made us laugh, cry, scream and shout, or hide behind a cloak of mootness. Critical examination of the self allows one to disintegrate the envelope of their present personality and make up a new imaging. "
19 " Sentences spoken by writers, unless they have been written out first, rarely say what writers wish to say. Writers are unlucky speakers, by and large, which accounts for their being in a profession which encourages them to stay at their desk for years, if necessary, pondering what to say next and how best to say it. Interviewers propose to speed up this process by trepanning writers, so to speak, and fishing around in their brains for unused ideas which otherwise might never get out of there. Not a single idea has ever been discovered by means of this brutal method-- and still the trepanning of authors goes on every day.I now refuse all those who wish to take the top off my skull yet again. The only way to get anything out of a writer's brains is to leave him or her alone until he or she is damn well ready to write it down. "
20 " ...most people in the world don't really use their brains to think. And people who don't think are the ones who don't listen to others. "
― Haruki Murakami , 1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3)
