Quotes About Cognition

To think is to practice brain chemistry.

Even the most analytical thinkers are predictably irrational; the really smart ones acknowledge and address their irrationalities.

Too much of the education system orients students toward becoming better thinkers, but there is almost no focus on our capacity to pay attention and cultivate awareness.

It interests me when I hear people quoting great thinkers, because it's like, OK, but does that make you any brighter?

Accuracy of observation is the equivalent of accuracy of thinking.

Principles and rules are intended to provide a thinking man with a frame of reference.

An idea is always a generalization, and generalization is a property of thinking. To generalize means to think.

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.

Studies have shown that 90% of error in thinking is due to error in perception. If you can change your perception, you can change your emotion and this can lead to new ideas.

All perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention.

If I look confused it is because I am thinking.

I am not what I think. I am thinking what I think.

When you're speaking Spanish, you're thinking in a different way.

Most men, when they think they are thinking, are merely rearranging their prejudices.

What's nice about having an engineering degree is everybody thinks you are smart.

My dad thinks I have a photographic memory.

We want Google to be the third half of your brain.

When I multiply numbers together, I see two shapes. The image starts to change and evolve, and a third shape emerges. That's the answer. It's mental imagery. It's like maths without having to think.

We are all cognitive misers. Our brains do not expend mental resources thoroughly examining problems when snap judgments will do.

I'll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell... their heart's in the right place, but their head is a thoroughly inefficient organ.

The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.

Man is the only animal capable of reasoning, though many others possess the faculty of memory and instruction in common with him.

We often talk about people with great memories as though it were some sort of an innate gift, but that is not the case. Great memories are learned. At the most basic level, we remember when we pay attention. We remember when we are deeply engaged.

An individual ant, even though it has a brain about a millionth of a size of a human being's, can learn a maze; the kind we use is a simple rat maze in a laboratory. They can learn it about one-half as fast as a rat.