Quotes About Cognition

Everyone has photographic memory; some just don't have the film.

The only reason people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory.

No matter where you go or what you do, you live your entire life within the confines of your head.

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thought that is forever flowing through one's head.

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

Life is but thought.

We come to its aid; we falsify it by memory and by suggestion;

Os nomes que designam as coisas respondem sempre a uma noção da inteligência, estranha às nossas impressões verdadeiras e que nos força a eliminar delas tudo o que não se reporte a essa noção.

The valet de chambre had entered. I did not tell him that I had rung several times, for I realized that hitherto all I had done was to dream that I had rung. I was alarmed to think, however, that this dream had had the clarity of a cognition. Could cognition, by the same token, have the unreality of a dream?

L'habitude de penser empêche parfois d'éprouver le réel, immunise contre lui, le fait paraître de la pensée encore.

For mental uncertainty is even more of an obstacle to clear visual perception than a physical defect of the eye would be.

we do not know what a thing is until we have approached it with our intelligence.

No por saber una cosa se la puede impedir; pero siquiera las cosas que averiguamos las tenemos, si no entre las manos, por lo menos en el pensamiento, y allí están a nuestra disposición, lo cual nos inspira la ilusión de gozar sobre ellas una especie de dominio

Because before you acquired language, you didn't exist.

We explain the world the way we think about it. There's no way out of our minds.

It's been said that only the very rich understand the difference between themselves and the poor, and only the truly brilliant understand the difference between themselves and the relatively dumb.

The mind is not sex-typed.

The brain is a three pound mass you can hold in your hand that can conceive of a universe a hundred-billion light-years across.

Reigning over the worlds in your brain – that's a true prerogative of rational existence…

Our brains tend to reinforce what we already believe.

confirmation bias means we look for and find evidence to support our beliefs. We cherry-pick information that confirms what we already know, while ignoring (consciously and unconsciously) information that challenges our existing beliefs.

the brain is wired to answer questions. No matter what question you ask, your brain will immediately start searching for an answer.

Nothing exists in our world that does not first exist in our mind.