Phrenology Quotes:

Psychoanalysis will fade away just as mesmerism and phrenology did, and for the same reason - its exploded pretensions will deprive it of recruits

- Frederick Crews

source: Frederick C. Crews, Frederick Crews (1988). “Skeptical Engagements”, Oxford University Press, USA

topic: Phrenology, Reason, Recruit, Fade Away

PHRENOLOGY, n. The science of picking the pocket through the scalp. It consists in locating and exploiting the organ that one is a dupe with.

- Ambrose Bierce

source: Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.181, University of Georgia Press

topic: Science, Pockets, Phrenology

I never knew I had an inventive talent until Phrenology told me so. I was a stranger to myself until then!

- Thomas A. Edison

topic: Phrenology, Talent, Stranger

I suspect that our own faith in psychiatry will seem as touchingly quaint to the future as our grandparents' belief in phrenology seems now to us.

- Gore Vidal

source: Gore Vidal, Donald Weise (1999). “Gore Vidal: Sexually Speaking, Collected Sex Writings”

topic: Grandparent, Phrenology, Belief

I look upon Phrenology as the guide to philosophy and the handmaid of Christianity. Whoever disseminates true Phrenology is a public benefactor.

- Horace Mann

topic: Philosophy, Phrenology, Looks, Handmaids

I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

source: Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2514, Delphi Classics

topic: Hope, Hate, Rap, Americanism, Phrenology

Phrenology taught us that the mind thinks by means of the brain, is liable to become fatigued by too long attention, as the locomotive muscles are by too much walking; and I therefore proposed to them to take a brief rest.

- George Combe

source: George Combe (2010). “Notes on the United States of North America During a Phrenological Visit in 1838-39-40”, p.84, Cambridge University Press

topic: Mean, Thinking, Long, Locomotives, Phrenology

Nature may be as selfishly studied as trade. Astronomy to the selfish becomes astrology; psychology, mesmerism (with intent to show where aour spoons are gone); and anatomy and physiology become phrenology and palmistry.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

source: Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Emerson's Essays: Top Essays”, p.102, 谷月社

topic: Nature, Selfish, Science, Palmistry, Anatomy

Astronomy to the selfish becomes astrology.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

topic: Selfish, Astrology, Astronomy, Palmistry, Anatomy And Physiology

Astrology is the sheerest hokum. This pseudoscience has been around since the day of the Chaldeans and Babylonians. It is as phony as numerology, phrenology, palmistry, alchemy, the reading of tea leaves, and the practice of divination by the entrails of a goat. No serious person will buy the notion that our lives are influenced individually by the movement of distant planets. This is the sawdust blarney of the carnival midway.

- James J. Kilpatrick

topic: Reading, Serious Person, Practice, Pseudoscience, Midway

[Vestiges begins] from principles which are at variance with all sober inductive truth. The sober facts of geology shuffled, so as to play a rogue's game; phrenology (that sinkhole of human folly and prating coxcombry); spontaneous generation; transmutation of species; and I know not what; all to be swallowed, without tasting and trying, like so much horse-physic!! Gross credulity and rank infidelity joined in unlawful marriage, and breeding a deformed progeny of unnatural conclusions!

- Adam Sedgwick

topic: Horse, Games, Play, Geology, Sinkholes

The strange, wonderful stories of Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain introduce us to the tremendously gifted Kirsten Menger-Anderson, a writer whose subject is nothing less than the diagnosis and cure of the human malady. We follow twelve generations of New York City's Steenwycks family through their forays into phrenology, mesmerism, radium therapy and similar misadventures, a historically rich narrative that Menger-Anderson delivers in striking, elegant prose and with a sure eye for detail. This is a remarkable debut by a writer to watch.

- Ben Fountain

topic: New York, Eye, Cities, Misadventure, Olaf

Phrenology is the study of the brain or how it operates, you know, the particular components that effect the nerves and the thought process, and the study of the size of the head. We just wanted to tie it into subject matters.

- Black Thought

topic: Ties, Brain, Nerves, Phrenology, Components

A rare book at once of great importance and wonderful to read.... Gould presents a fascinating historical study of scientific racism, tracing it through monogeny and polygeny, phrenology , recapitulation, and hereditarian IQ theory. He stops at each point to illustrate both the logical inconsistencies of the theories and the prejudicially motivated, albeit unintentional, misuse of data in each case.... A major addition to the scientific literature.

- Stephen Jay Gould

topic: Book, Data, Racism, Recapitulation, Phrenology

Every good journalist is aware that his trade may one day go the way of phrenology-and, what's more, the population will hardly protest the extinction.

- David Remnick

topic: One Day, Population, May, Phrenology