Quotes About Cognition

Still, your mind works true, and argues not a particulari ad universale.

In Plato's parable of the cave, our senses are privy only to a flattened, diminished version of the true, more richly textured, reality. Maldacena's flattened world is very different. Far from being diminished, it tells the full story. It's a profoundly different story from the one we're used to. But his flattened world may well be the primary narrator.

I think I thought, therefore I think I was.

Never underestimate the power of the human mind to believe what it wants to believe, no matter the conflicting evidence. —Caedmon Erb, Politics and Reality

The thinking machine I admire most is the human brain. —NORMA CENVA, early technical journal article submitted to Tio Holtzman

I am a people watcher and I have a very good memory.

The brain is a fickle bitch. Sometimes it revolts." He

What is the most important and valuable work that you do, in any field or profession? It's thinking!

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is why most people would rather die than think.

There is a saying, "There are those who think. There are those who think they think. And then there is the vast majority who would rather die than think.

You are not what you think you are, but what you think, you are.

Because if it hurts, it's your thinking that's hurting you.

We're usually aware of the feeling before the thought.

Memory is just an alternate version of reality.

It is said that humans are defined and distinguished from other animals by our ability to use tools and language, but often I wonder if the most uniquely human trait is our ability to deceive ourselves.

It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English - up to fifty words used in correct context - no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese.

Science is only a Latin word for knowledge

Our perceptions are fallible. We sometimes see what isn't there. We are prey to optical illusions. Occasionally we hallucinate. We are error-prone.

The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.

Humans are good, she knew, at discerning subtle patterns that are really there, but equally so at imagining them when they are altogether absent.

What thin partitions sense from thought divide!

Intuitive: The word conveys, I think, a diffuse annoyance at our inability to understand how we come by such knowledge.

The cognitive abilities of chimpanzees force us, I think, to raise searching questions about the boundaries of the community of beings to which special ethical considerations are due.

True memories seemed like phantoms, while false memories were so convincing that they replaced reality. GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ, Strange Pilgrims (1992)