Brian Greene Quotes

Most people draw from the mind, not the eye. They draw the idea of a table or a face, not what's in front of them. We don't actually see the line of the jaw as a line and we don't see an eye as a perfectly outlined almond shape.

The soul never thinks without a picture.

Logicians may reason about abstractions. But the great mass of men must have images.

I am interested in relating the things we see with the things we see with our eyes closed.

Visualization. It may be the most important part of your mental package.

For some time it's been my habit to use images when preparing a speech: rather than write it down, I illustrate it.

When I was in high school and college, I thought everybody could think in pictures. And my first inkling to my thinking was even different was when I was in college and I read an article about, you know, some scientist said that the caveman could not have designed tools until they had language.

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.

Everything for me is visual. That's just how my head works.

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

I have a visual mind, so when I read a book, I get an instant picture in my head and it's very clear.

My suggestion is that at each state the proper order of operation of the mind requires an overall grasp of what is generally known, not only in formal logical, mathematical terms, but also intuitively, in images, feelings, poetic usage of language, etc.

I don't think in words; I think in pictures, in images.

Language for me narrates the pictures in my mind. When I work on designing livestock equipment I can test run that equipment in my head like 3-D virtual reality. In fact, when I was in college I used to think that everybody was able to do that.

I think one of the important evolutions is that we no longer feel compulsively the need to argue, or to justify things on a kind of rational level. We are much more willing to admit that certain things are completely instinctive and others are really intellectual.

Well, I'll say I have an incredible ability to fantasize - I really do. I don't have to have things tangible to be able to see them, and therefore I enjoy so many things, because they're in my mind.

I only think in live action.

Sometimes, I believe I actually see the wheels in my brain turning.

When I'm problem-solving with something, I have, effectively, a CAD program in my head that's like a room that has specific qualities to it that I go to some deal of effort to populate. Textures and smells, something like that.

Everything I think is in pictures.

Imagination is a form of seeing

Shut your eyes and see.

I had a feeling once about mathematics - that I saw it all... but it was after dinner and I let it go.

I like visual imagery in my head.

Thinking in pictures is, therefore, only a very incomplete form of becoming conscious. In some way, too, it stands nearer to unconscious processes than does thinking in words, and it is unquestionably older than the latter both ontogenetically and phylogenetically.