Quotes About Cognition

I just have to be smarter than my own mind.

Jede Folgerung, die wir aus unseren Beobachtungen ziehen, ist meistens voreilig: Denn hinter den wahrgenommenen Erscheinungen gibt es solche, die wir undeutlich sehen, und hinter diesen wahrscheinlich noch andere, die wir überhaupt nicht erkennen.

Hebben de goden ons geen verstand gegeven om mee te denken en te oordelen?

the names we use for things bear no inherent relation to the things themselves.

Gender thus provides our second example of how the mother tongue influences thought.

The mind cannot just manufacture words for abstract concepts out of thin air – all it can do is adapt what is already available.

the brain of a child learning a language can cope with a mind-boggling amount of linguistic complexity.

Mankind's perception of color, he says, increased "according to the schema of the color spectrum": first came the sensitivity to red, then to yellow, then to green, and only finally to blue and violet. The most remarkable thing about it all, he adds, is that this development seems to have occurred in exactly the same order in different cultures all over the world. Thus, in Geiger's hands, Gladstone's discoveries about

There are many languages that don't make a distinction between green and blue and treat these as shades of one color.

we see in essence not with two eyes but with three: with the two eyes of the body and with the eye of the mind that is behind them. And it is in this eye of the mind in which the cultural-historical progressive development of the color sense takes place.

The parts of the body are the closest and most immediate things in our physical environment, and are thus most deeply imprinted in our cognition, so it is no wonder that body-parts are the sources of terms for all kinds of more abstract concepts in so many languages.

But, in reality, the ingenious inferences made in these experiments are symptoms not of great strength but of great weakness. For all this ingenuity is needed only because we know so little about how the brain works. Were we not profoundly ignorant, we would not need to rely on roundabout methods of gleaning information from measures such as reaction speed to various contrived tasks.

that sounds like a real live issue to the people who don't think and have nothing to think with, which means a large majority of the voters.

If you don't like the facts, you ignore them, and if you need facts, dream up some you do like

A trick does not fool the eye but fools the brain. In order to do that, it must be performed so that the secret parts are not noticed.

The most confused you will ever get, is when you try to convince yourself of something your mind knows is a lie.

It fascinates me. How I can remember my opinions, without remembering my reasons for them!

Thought is the thought of thought.

Your mind will give back exactly what you put into it.

By thinking of things you could understand them.

Words which he did not understand he said over and over to himself till he had learnt them by heart: and through them he had glimpses of the real world about them.

After sound, light and heat, memory, will and understanding.

I also am sure that there is no such thing as free thinking inasmuch as all thinking must be bound by its own laws.

Thought is a thought of thought