Brains Quotes
More Brains Quotes
The difference between a fast bowler and a good fast bowler is not extra muscle but extra brains.
Fred (Frederick Sewards) Trueman— 1964 FreddieTrueman's Book of Cricket.
We all grow up with the weight of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies.
shirley abbott— p. 1 (opening lines)
With all the clever brains in America it would be great to see more investment and focus on this essential research!
louise burfitt-dons— Video message sent to Joe Biden in response to his suggestions for green jobs (2009)
. . . you would be well advised to practice extreme discrimination on what filters through to that area of the brain that requires belief. Some or the more lucid, literate and better educated folks will tell you that they have conquered that base, primal nature of humanity and will inform that their brains do not require the gullible mechanism of blind acceptance called belief and their brains function far more clearly and with greater cogence. Just remember, Santa Claus is waiting.
kenny young— In reference to the subject of Alien Abductions in an e-mail from Young to Feeney on Wed, January 1, 2003.
If those extra-social brains are so potent, why after all do they effect so little? A dull police-officer, with the machine behind him, can afford to laugh at most experiments in anarchy.
john buchan— Ch. 3 "Tells of a Midsummer Night"
American housewives have not had their brains shot away, nor are they schizophrenic in the clinical sense. But if … the fundamental human drive is not the urge for pleasure or the satisfaction of biological needs, but the need to grow and to realize one’s full potential, their comfortable, empty, purposeless days are indeed cause for a nameless terror.
betty friedan— Ch 13 "The Forfeited Self"
It was the unemployment that was the hardest to bear. The jobless millions were like an embolism in the nation's vital circulation; and while their indisputable existence argued more forcibly than any text that something was wrong with the system, the economists wrung their hands and racked their brains and called upon the spirit of Adam Smith, but could offer neither diagnosis or remedy.
robert heilbroner— Chapter IX, John Maynard Keynes, p. 240
My mother always told me the best way to learn to deal with a man was to learn to ride a mule. She said they have about equal brains most of the time. Sometimes the mule is smarter.
robert jordan— The Wheel of Time #2: The Great Hunt (1991)
Prior to the advent of brain, there was no color and no sound in the universe, nor was there any flavor or aroma and probably rather little sense and no feeling or emotion. Before brains the universe was also free of pain and anxiety.
roger wolcott sperry— "Evolution of the Human Brain" (1964), p. 2
Because our minds need to reduce information, we are more likely to try to squeeze a phenomenon into the Procrustean bed of a crisp and known category (amputating the unknown), rather than suspend categorization, and make it tangible. Thanks to our detections of false patterns, along with real ones, what is random will appear less random and more certain our overactive brains are more likely to impose the wrong, simplistic, narrative than no narrative at all.
nassim nicholas taleb— p. 105 (The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010))
I shall take the heart, for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world.
l. frank baum— L. Frank Baum, lines for the Tinman in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900).
You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And you are the guy who'll decide where to go.
dr. seuss— Oh, the Places You'll Go, by Dr. Seuss (1990, pg. 2)
'Slavery's a thing thet depends on complexion, It's God's law thet fetters on black skins don't chafe; Ef brains wuz to settle it (horrid reflection!) Wich of our onnable body'd be safe?'
james russell lowell— 1848 'The Debate in the Sennit', in the Boston Courier, 3 May, collected in The Biglow Papers: First Series (1848), no. 5.
Know that famous proverb? When the prick stands up, the brains get buried in the ground!
— 1969 Portnoy's Complaint,'Cunt Crazy'.
We have very similar brains. But they come out in different personalities.
guy berryman— Chris Martin, on Berryman's reticence
— Scaggs, Austin; Corbijn, Anton (2005-08-25), "COLDPLAY'S QUIET STORM". Rolling Stone. (981):40-46
One said of suicide, “As long as one has brains one should not blow them out.” And another answered, “But when one has ceased to have them, too often one cannot.”
f. h. bradley— Aphorisms, No. 48 (1930)
Now, partly that was work, and partly that was brains, but very largely it was having the guts, the guts to be immodest in the right way.
edwin h. land— On the growth of Polaroid, in a statement to employees (25 June 1958), as quoted in Insisting on the Impossible : The Life of Edwin Land (1998) by Victor K. McElheny, p. 198
God has given us our talents, not to copy the talents of others, but rather to use our brains and imagination in order to obtain the revelation of true beauty.
louis comfort tiffany— The Art Work of Louis C. Tiffany [biography dictated to Charles de Kay] (Doubleday, Page & Co New York, 1916)
In some circles where very heavy people think they have very heavy brains, words like "charming" and "clever" and "pretty" are all put-downs; all the lighter things in life, which are the most important things, are put down.
Andy Warhol— Ch. 4: Beauty
How ironic. In order to avoid the "nutty" theory of inversion, Gaskell invented the even odder notion of stomachs turning into brains with new guts forming below. No wonder then, that later biologists cast a plague on both speculative houses and opted instead for the obvious alternative: arthropods and vertebrates do not share the same anatomical plan at all, but rather represent two separate evolutionary developments of similar complexity from a much simpler common ancestor that grew neither a discrete gut nor a central nerve cord.
stephen jay gould— "Brotherhood by Inversion", p. 327
It was an All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self not merely a thing of one Space-Time continuum, but allied to the ultimate animating essence of existence's whole unbounded sweep the last, utter sweep which has no confines and which outreaches fancy and mathematics alike. It was perhaps that which certain secret cults of earth have whispered of as YOG-SOTHOTH, and which has been a deity under other names; that which the crustaceans of Yuggoth worship as the Beyond-One, and which the vaporous brains of the spiral nebulae know by an untranslatable Sign...
h. p. lovecraft— "Through the Gates of the Silver Key " - written with E. Hoffman Price, October 1932 - Apr 1933; first published in Weird Tales, Vol. 24, No. 1 (July 1934)
Great minds that are healthy are never considered geniuses, while this sublime qualification is lavished on brains that are often inferior but are slightly touched by madness.
Guy de Maupassant— "The Englishman of Etretat"
Nothing is more common than energy in money-making, quite independent of any higher object than its accumulation. A man who devotes himself to this pursuit, body and soul, can scarcely fail to become rich. Very little brains will do; spend less than you earn; add guinea to guinea; scrape and save; and the pile of gold will gradually rise.
Samuel Smiles— Ch. X : Money — Its Use and Abuse
I not only use all the brains I have, but all I can borrow, and I have borrowed a lot since I read it to you first.
— Speech to the National Press Club (20 March 1914).
The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts: Those with brains, but no religion, And those with religion, but no brains.
— Abu'l-`Ala' al-Ma`arri (973–1058) (Arabic: ?), poet of Ma`arra, quoted in Crusades Through Arab Eyes (1989) by Amin Maalouf
The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts: Those with brains, but no religion, And those with religion, but no brains.
— Abu'l-`Ala' al-Ma`arri, d. 1057, poet of Ma`arra; quoted in The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, by Amin Maalouf
How quickly nature falls into revolt When gold becomes her object! For this the foolish over-careful fathers Have broke their sleep with thoughts, their brains with care, Their bones with industry: For this they have engrossed and pil'd up The canker'd heaps of strange-achieved gold; For this they have been thoughtful to invest Their sons with arts and martial exercises.
william shakespeare— William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part II (c. 1597-99), Act IV, scene 5, line 66.
To curle on the ice, does greatly please, Being a manly Scottish exercise; It clears the brains, stirs up the Native Heat, And gives a gallant appetite for Meat.
— 1715 Quoted in Colin Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).
brains are not everything.
George Bernard Shaw— 1898 Rev Samuel Gardner. MrsWarren's Profession, act1.
