Quotes from David Eagleman

Every week I get letters from people worldwide who feel that the possibilian point of view represents their understanding better than either religion or neo-atheism.

I think what a life in science really teaches you is the vastness of our ignorance.

My dream is to reform the legal system over the next 20 years.

Just like a good drama, the human brain runs on conflict.

We're trapped on this very thin slice of perception ... But even at that slice of reality that we call home, we're not seeing most of what's going on.

Every week I get letters from people worldwide who feel that the possibilian point of view represents their understanding better than either religion or neo-atheism.

What a life in science really teaches you is the vastness of our ignorance.

I spent my adult life as a scientist, and science is, essentially, the most successful approach we have to try and understand the vast mysteries around.

There are an infinite number of boring things to do in science.

People wouldn't even go into science unless there was something much bigger to be discovered, something that is transcendent.

Our internal life and external actions are steered by biological coctails to which we have neither immediate access nor direct acquaintance.

The same stimuli in the world can be inducing very different experiences internally and it's probably based on a single change in a gene. What I am doing is pulling the gene forward and imaging and doing behavioural tests to understand what that difference is and how reality can be constructed so differently.

What we find is that our brains have colossal things happening in them all the time.

Every atom in your body is the same quark in different places at the same moment in time.

All life is no more than a match struck in the dark and blown out again.

There are always wonderful mysteries to confront.

We don't really understand most of what's happening in the cosmos. Is there any afterlife? Who knows.

Part of the scientific temperament is this tolerance for holding multiple hypotheses in mind at the same time.

The more familiar the world becomes, the less information your brain writes down, and the more quickly time seems to pass.

My dream is to reform the legal system over the next 20 years.

Love was not specified in the design of your brain; it is merely an endearing algorithm that freeloads on the leftover processing cycles.

I think the first decade of this century is going to be remembered as a time of extremism.

What has always surprised me when I walk into a bookstore is the number of books that you can find that are written with certainty. The authors tell some story as though it's true, but they don't have any evidence that it is true!

Neuroscience over the next 50 years is going to introduce things that are mind-blowing.