Joshua Foer Quotes

As bad as we are at remembering names and phone numbers and word-for-word instructions from our colleagues, we have really exceptional visual and spatial memories.

My dad thinks I have a photographic memory.

I would love to have a photographic memory. It would come in handy with the rants I'm given on Scrubs... often on short notice!

We're visual creatures. Probably, when we were hunter gatherers... that was the kind of thing that mattered. And remembering, say, phone numbers was, like, not that important when you're hunting down a mastodon or whatever.

Every view, and every object I studied attentively, by viewing them again and again on every side, for I was anxious to make a lasting impression of it on my imagination.

I have a photographic memory.

Memory is a big one: our ability to use the memory and move things in and out efficiently - that affected what we were able to do more than anything.

Our memory is like a shop in the window of which is exposed now one, now another photograph of the same person. And as a rule the most recent exhibit remains for some time the only one to be seen.

The brain can process two million bits of information per second. It remembers everything you've ever seen, everything you've ever heard.

Your eyes is camera and your brain is a file cabinet.

I was helped by having a verbatim memory of what happened years ago, even if I can't remember what happened a couple of days ago.

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

I'm a visual thinker, not a language-based thinker. My brain is like Google Images.

There must be a little memory bank, a library or storage unit in my brain, that just tucks away memories of other people. I suck in as much of life as I can. I don't do it deliberately - I'm just curious. Dangerously so. I collect visual and aural patterns, physical human patterns, from experience.

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

You never realize what a good memory you have until you try to forget something.

My memory is basically visual: that's what I remember, rooms and landscapes. What I do not remember are what the people in these room were telling me. I never see letters or sentences when I write or read, but only the images they produce.

I have a great memory.

The function of memory is not only to preserve, but also to throw away. If you remembered everything from your entire life, you would be sick.

We are visual creatures. Visual things stay put, whereas sounds fade.

Pictures help you to form the mental mold.

The hippocampus helps record both types of memories initially, and it helps retain them for the medium term. The hippocampus also helps us access old personal memories in long-term storage in other parts of the brain.

Memory is funny. Once you hit a vein the problem is not how to remember but how to control the flow.

Computers have wonderful memories. Human memory is more fuzzy.

I'm a visual thinker. Research tells us that only 20 per cent of people think visually. So what about the other 80 per cent? Don't they think in pictures? I mean if you imagine washing and preparing potatoes you visualise the process, right?