Michael Gazzaniga famous quotes

While there have been great technological advances in the study of the brain, yielding enormous amounts of data on its physical and psychological characteristics, the old problem of relating mind to brain in a reasonable fashion remains unaccomplished.
-- Michael Gazzaniga

#Fashion #Data #Brain

The human brain is generally regarded as a complex web of adaptations built into the nervous system, even though no one knows how.
-- Michael Gazzaniga

#Brain #Nervous #Adaptation

The arts are not frosting but baking soda.
-- Michael Gazzaniga

#Art #Baking #Soda

Experiments on split-brain patients reveal how readily the left brain interpreter can make up stories and beliefs. In one experiment, for example, when the word walk was presented only to the right side of a patient's brain, he got up and started walking. When he was asked why he did this, the left brain (where language is stored and where the word walk was not presented) quickly created a reason for the action: I wanted to go get a Coke.
-- Michael Gazzaniga

#Brain #Religion #Example

Don't leave home without your left hemisphere
-- Michael Gazzaniga

#Home #Hemisphere

The interpretive mechanism of the left celebral hemisphere is always hard at work, seeking the meaning of events. It is constantly looking for order and reason, even when there is none - which leads it continually to make mistakes.
-- Michael Gazzaniga

#Mistake #Order #Events

Those who can bring themselves to renounce wealth, position and power accruing from a social system based on violence and putting a premium on acquisitiveness, and to identify themselves in some real fashion with the struggle of the masses toward the light, may help in a measure - more, doubtless, by life than by words - to devise a more excellent way, a technique of social progress less crude, brutal, costly and slow than mankind has yet evolved.

I was in a fashion show and I had on a strapless top. When I got to the end the top was down

To take part in the African revolution, it is not enough to write a revolutionary song. You must fashion the revolution with the people. And if you fashion it with the people, the songs will come by themselves.

The distinction between right and wrong ("la distinction du bien et du mal", Fr.), is nothing else than their unyielding (or implacable) opposition; thus the moral consciousness is an innate and intimate revelation of the absolute, which goes beyond (or goes pass, or exceed) every empirical data (or given information). It is only on these principles that we will be able to establish ("pourront être édifiées", Fr.) the real basis of morality.

A ten per cent reduction in military expenditures per year would be reasonable, coupled with a programme of retraining the workforce and redirecting the resources in a manner that creates employment and advances social welfare. I also encourage all States to contribute to the UN's annual Report on Military Expenditures by submitting complete data on national defence budgets.

Scientists learn about the world in three ways: They analyze statistical patterns in the data, they do experiments, and they learn from the data and ideas of other scientists. The recent studies show that children also learn in these ways.

Society needs people who...know how to be compassionate and honest...Societ y needs all kinds of skills that are not just cognitive; they're emotional, they're affectional. You can't run the society on data and computers alone.

Let me tell you, though: being the smartest boy in the world wasn’t easy. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t want this. On the contrary, it was a huge burden. First, there was the task of keeping my brain perfectly protected. My cerebral cortex was a national treasure, a masterpiece of the Sistine Chapel of brains. This was not something that could be treated frivolously. If I could have locked it in a safe, I would have. Instead, I became obsessed with brain damage.

That brain of mine is something more than merely mortal; as time will show.

Don't try to make intelligent decisions when your brain is hyped