Lewis Thomas Quotes

Brain: an apparatus with which we think that we think. Mind, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain.

It is impossible to live without brains, either one's own or borrowed.

If it is mind that we are searching the brain, then we are supposing the brain to be much more than a telephone-exchange. We are supposing it to be a telephone-exchange along with subscribers as well.

The brain is the citadel of sense perception.

It turns out your conscious mind - the part you think of as you - is really the smallest part of what’s happening in your brain, and usually the last one in line to find out any information.

To know the brain...is equivalent to ascertaining the material course of thought and will, to discovering the intimate history of life in its perpetual duel with external forces.

The brain and its satellite glands have now been probed to the point where no particular site remains that can reasonably be supposed to harbour a nonphysical mind.

The brain is an immensely complex organ, and many mysteries remain. Exactly how brain and mind or soma and psyche are related is one of them.

The brain is such an incredible computer.

It is the brain, not the heart or lungs, that is the critical organ.

The brain is the key, the brain is the source, the brain is God. Everything that humans do is neuroecology.

The last 100 years of research into the human brain...sees the brain as an organ that works by physical principles just like the other organs in the body...our emotions and higher callings, such as religion, as well as our grubby low-level physical systems like stereo vision and motor control, are products of a machine.

Daniel Levitin takes the most sophisticated ideas that exist about the brain and mind, applies them to the most emotionally direct art we have, our songs, and makes beautiful music of the two together.

Thinking is movement confined to the brain

Although we tend to think of the brain as a discrete organ - a lump of squidgy tissue - it is better to think of it as part of an elaborate network of nervous tissue that reaches out to every single part of the body.

We are our brains. My brain is talking to your brain; our bodies are hanging along for the ride.

Mind is memory, not intelligence.

Consciousness is the smallest player in the operations of the brain.

Minds are simply what brains do.

Some may be helped by images, some may not. Some require an image outside, others one inside the brain.

I think that what the machines can do, of course, is wonderful, but it's not the same as what the brain can do.

The eye and brain are not like a fax machine, nor are there little people looking at the images coming in.

The brain can be seen as a complex machine, like a gooey computer.

The brain is the highest of the organs in position, and it is protected by the vault of the head; it has no flesh or blood or refuse. It is the citadel of sense-perception.