Seth Shostak Quotes

In our skulls, we carry around 3 pounds of slimy, wet, greyish tissue, corrugated like crumpled toilet paper. You wouldn't think, to look at the unappetizing lump, that it was some of the most powerful stuff in the known universe.

The evolution of the brain not only overshot the needs of prehistoric man, it is the only example of evolution providing a species with an organ which it does not know how to use.

The brain is so intricate. It can do so many things, and people sleep on it. It's not just a piece of meat in there - it can do so much.

If little else, the brain is an educational toy.

People haven't even begun to tap into the potential of what the mind is possible of doing. We only use a certain percentage of our brains.

To be sure, ASPM isn't the gene responsible for building big brains - there's no such single gene. But it's critical to the process, and the primate line has almost certainly benefited from distinct changes in ASPM.

If you're only using 10 percent of your brain, you don't even know that you're using 10 percent of your brain. If you're only using 10 percent of something, that means you don't know the rest of the 90!

Our brains are way, way more complex than any computer we know how to make. They're way more creative. The input's pretty good, but the output is constrained by our tongues and jaws moving and us typing.

The most complex object in the known universe: brain, only uses 20 watts of power. It would require a nuclear power plant to energize a computer the size of a city block to mimic your brain, and your brain does it with just 20 watts. So if someone calls you a dim bulb, that's a compliment.

The human brain is a wonderful organ. It starts to work as soon as you are born and doesn't stop until you get up to deliver a speech.

The dog, on the other hand, has few or no ideas because his brain acts in coarse fashion and because there are few connections with each single process.

In the human mind, the number of possible connections that can be made between neurons greatly exceeds the number of atoms in the universe.

Man is still the most extraordinary computer of all.

Neuroscience is by far the most exciting branch of science because the brain is the most fascinating object in the universe. Every human brain is different - the brain makes each human unique and defines who he or she is.

All evidence shows that we are actually getting smarter. Roughly we are getting 10 IQ points smarter every decade. The speed of innovation is also faster.

Sure, our three-pound brains might be inadequate to understand the universe. But perhaps they're just good enough to build something that can.

When we talk about the brain, it is anything but unidimensional or simplistic or reductionistic.

The mind of the polyglot is a very particular thing, and scientists are only beginning to look closely at how acquiring a second language influences learning, behavior and the very structure of the brain itself.

The early development of the human brain is extremely important for setting the table, if you will, for potential future accomplishment.

Everybody agrees that the brain is a remarkable machine. It's capable of generating an enormous number of phenomena, some of them very obvious and some of them less obvious. But I think that in the end there are going to be some very basic explanations for many things: emotions, awareness, consciousness, attention, perception, recognition.

Knowledge fills a large brain; it merely inflates a small one.

Why do we have a brain in the first place? Not to write books, articles, or plays; not to do science or play music. Brains develop because they are an expedient way of managing life in a body.

The brain is the most complicated organ in the universe. We have learned a lot about other human organs. We know how the heart pumps and how the kidney does what it does. To a certain degree, we have read the letters of the human genome. But the brain has 100 billion neurons. Each one of those has about 10,000 connections.

Brains, you see, vary a lot from person to person - they vary as much as faces do.

When brains get sufficiently big, presumably, as human brains have, consciousness seems to emerge.