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Quote by Abhijit Naskar

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Neurosonnets: The Naskar Art of Neuroscience

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Abhijit Naskar

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“There's a pleasure in knowing the names of things. It's not about a need to categorise the world, sectioning it into little boxes. And clearly you don't have to know the names of rocks - or trees or plants or birds - in order to enjoy a landscape. But if you do have this information, something changes about the way you exist in that space. A named landscape thickens. It's to do with history and context but also, I think, with the quality of attention. To assign something its name, you need to take the time to pick out identifying features. You look for longer. And the more you know, the more things stop being a backdrop - blurred, indistinguishable, hurried over - and become somehow more present in the view, more insistently themselves, the way a familiar face stands out in a crowd.”

“We do not pay at the pump for the cost of climate change. For the loss of ecosystem services provided by maples and others. Cheap gas now or maples for the next generation? Call me crazy but I’d welcome the tax that would resolve that question. Individuals far wiser than I have said that we get the government we deserve. That may be true but the maples our most generous of benefactors, most responsible of citizens do not deserve our government: they deserve you and me speaking up on their behalf. To quote our town councilwoman “Show up at the damn meeting” Political action, civil engagement these are powerful acts of reciprocity with the land. The maple nation bill of responsibilities asks us to stand up for the standing people to lead with the wisdom of maples.”

“Bringing a candle to a neighbor's home who had their power cut off, is far holier than lighting a thousand candles in the church. If you bring electricity to a marginalized community with a simple solar power kit, it's a far greater scientific achievement than the gargantuan glories of the LHC. There is no greater scientific achievement than simple science solving big problems. There is no greater holiness than trading in the bible for a simple act of kindness.”

“You ask me if an ordinary person, by studying hard, would get to be able to imagine these things like I imagine. Of course. I was an ordinary person who studied hard. There's no miracle people — it just happens, they got interested in this thing and they learned all this stuff. They're just people. There's no talent, a special miracle ability to understand quantum mechanics or a miracle ability to imagine electromagnetic fields that comes without practice and reading and learning and study. So, if you say you take an ordinary person who's willing to devote a great deal of time and study and work and thinking and mathematics and time, then he's become a scientist.”