Quotessence
Home / Topics / Nervous System Quotes

Nervous System Quotes

Browse 234 quotes about Nervous System.

Related topics

BrainCentral Nervous SystemIfsHumansMenMindFeelsMeditationWayKnowsOrgansSimpleSpiritThinkingActionBodyConsciousnessFactsMayNeedsStatesTechnologyYoga

Nervous System Quotes

“It is now widely realized that nearly all the 'classical' problems of molecular biology have either been solved or will be solved in the next decade. The entry of large numbers of American and other biochemists into the field will ensure that all the chemical details of replication and transcription will be elucidated. Because of this, I have long felt that the future of molecular biology lies in the extension of research to other fields of biology, notably development and the nervous system.”

LongProblemLyingNextFeltNumbersFieldsDevelopmentResearchDetailsDecadesNervousBiologyChemicalsExtensionsEntryLarge NumbersNervous SystemBiochemistryMolecular BiologyReplicationTranscription
Author:Sydney Brenner
Create image

“Seen in retrospect, evolution as a whole doubtless had a general direction, from simple to complex, from dependence on to relative independence of the environment, to greater and greater autonomy of individuals, greater and greater development of sense organs and nervous systems conveying and processing information about the state of the organism's surroundings, and finally greater and greater consciousness. You can call this direction progress or by some other name.”

StatesWholeNamesIndividualSimpleConsciousnessEnvironmentGreaterProgressInformationDevelopmentEvolutionIndependenceComplexesNervousRelativeOrgansOrganismsDependenceAutonomySurroundingsNervous SystemRetrospectProcessingConveying
Author:Theodosius Dobzhansky
Create image

“Basically there are two types of animals: animals, and animals that have no brains; they are called plants. They don't need a nervous system because they don't move actively, they don't pull up their roots and run in a forest fire! Anything that moves actively requires a nervous system; otherwise it would come to a quick death.”

NeedsTwoRunningMovingAnimalBrainFireTypeRootsPlantForestsNervousNervous SystemPull UpsForest FiresQuick Death
Author:Rodolfo Llinas
Create image

“Men are noisy, narrow-band devices, but their nervous systems have very many parallel and simultaneously active channels. Relative to men, computing machines are very fast and very accurate, but they are constrained to perform only one or a few elementary operations at a time. Men are flexible, capable of "programming themselves contingently" on the basis of newly received information. Computing machines are single-minded, constrained by their "pre-programming."”

MenInformationBandCapableMachinesBasesActiveNoiseNervousOperationsProgrammingDevicesRelativeAccurateFlexibleParallelsNoisyNervous SystemComputing
Book:In memoriam, J.C.R. Licklider, 1915-1990
Create image

“It's very difficult to explain the effect the first blues record I heard had on me, except to say that I recognized it immediately. It was as if I were being reintroduced to something that I already knew, maybe from another, earlier life. For me there is something primitively soothing about this music, and it went straight to my nervous system, making me feel ten feet tall.”

IfsLifeFeelsFirstsDifficultRecordsHeardFeetEffectsTenNervousTallSoothingNervous System
Book:Clapton: The Autobiography
Create image

“In a morbid condition of the brain, dreams often have a singular actuality, vividness, and extraordinary semblance of reality. At times monstrous images are created, but the setting and the whole picture are so truth-like and filled with details so delicate, so unexpectedly, but so artistically consistent, that the dreamer, were he an artist like Pushkin or Turgenev even, could never have invented them in the waking state. Such sick dreams always remain long in the memory and make a powerful impression on the overwrought and deranged nervous system.”

LifeLongStatesWholeDreamRealityArtistMemoriesPowerfulBrainConditionsSickFilledExtraordinaryDetailsImpressionSettingSettingsNervousConsistentWakingDreamerDelicateMonstrousNervous SystemMorbidActualitySemblanceDerangedWhole PictureVividnessPushkin
Book:Crime and Punishment: Dostoevsky's Collections
Create image

“I'd just like to see thinking come back in style. I haven't heard a new idea in eight years. Let's get ordinary people arguing and talking again. I want to trigger new circuits in their nervous systems. That's the philosopher's job and I am the most important philosopher at this time.”

PeopleThinkingWantYearsImportantIdeasJobsTalkingHeardStyleHavensOrdinaryPhilosopherEightArguingNervousNew IdeasOrdinary PeopleTriggersCircuitsNervous System
Author:Timothy Leary
Create image

“All the information in the universe, plus several bits from other dimensions that I'm still trying to sort out, have just been mainlined into my nervous system. The shards from a googleplex of infobits seem to be stuck in the part of my brain just above the pineal gland. Yes, I've just been reading Kenji Siratori again. This is my idea of a good time.”

TryingStillsIdeasSeemsUniverseReadingBitsBrainInformationStuckNervousDimensionsGood TimesPlusNervous SystemGlandsPineal Gland
Author:R. U. Sirius
Create image

“We are dealing with the best-educated generation in history. But they've got a brain dressed up with nowhere to go. Science is all metaphor. In the information age, you don't teach philosophy as they did after feudalism. You perform it. If Aristotle were alive today he'd have a talk show. If you don't like what you are doing, you can always pick up your needle and move to another groove. If you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in, and drop out.”

IfsPhilosophyShowsAgeTodayMovingTurnsGamesEnergyProcessBrainTeachAliveGenerationsInformationPicksHistoricalMetaphorEducatedNervousTunesOrgansTurn-onNeedlesDoing YouLive For TodayNervous SystemDressed UpGrooveTalk ShowsInformation AgeNowhere To GoFeudalism
Author:Timothy Leary
Create image

“The fate of the physiology of the brain is independent of the truth and falsity of my assertions relative to the laws of the organization of the nervous system, in general, and of the brain in particular, just as the knowledge of the functions of a sense is independent of the knowledge of the structure of its apparatus.”

LawBrainFateParticularOrganizationFunctionIndependentStructureNervousRelativeAssertionNervous SystemPhysiologyFalsity
Author:Franz Joseph Gall
Create image

“Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don't really have any rights left. Leasing our eyes and ears and nerves to commercial interests is like handing over the common speech to a private corporation, or like giving the earth's atmosphere to a company as a monopoly.”

GivingTryingEyeEarthLeftInterestCommonCompanyRightsSpeechBenefitsEarsSensesNervousAtmosphereCorporationsManipulationNervesMonopolyNervous SystemLeaseHanding Over
Book:Understanding media: the extensions of man
Create image

“Today's environment is beginning to threaten today's organizations, finding them seriously deficient in their nervous system design... The degree of coordination, perception, rational adaptation, etc., which will appear in the next generation of human organizations will drive our present organizational forms, with their clumsy nervous systems, into extinction.”

HumansTodayFormNextEnvironmentGenerationsDesignDegreesFindingsPerceptionOrganizationRationalNervousEtcAdaptationExtinctionNext GenerationNervous SystemClumsyOrganizationalCoordination
Author:Douglas Engelbart
Create image

“I profoundly admire Aldous Huxley, both for his philosophy and uncompromising sincerity. But I disagree with his advocacy of 'the chemical opening of doors into the Other World', and with his belief that drugs can procure 'what Catholic theologians call a gratuitous grace'. Chemically induced hallucinations, delusions and raptures may be frightening or wonderfully gratifying; in either case they are in the nature of confidence tricks played on one's own nervous system.”

WorldMayPhilosophyBeliefCasesGraceDoorsDrugCatholicTricksAdmireOpeningNervousDelusionChemicalsSincerityDisagreeFrighteningTheologianOther WorldsRaptureNervous SystemAdvocacyHallucinationsUncompromisingHuxley
Book:Kaleidoscope: essays from Drinkers of infinity, and The heel of Achilles and later pieces and stories
Create image

“The heavens were the grandstands and only the gods were spectators. The stake was the world, the forfeit was the player's place at the table, and the game had no recess. It was the most dangerous of all sports and the most fascinating. It got in the blood like wine. It aged men forty years in forty days. It ruined nervous systems in an hour.”

MenWorldYearsGamesHeavenSportsHoursPlayerBloodDangerousTablesWineNervousFascinatingAviationFortyCombatStakesRuinedSpectatorsNervous SystemRecessForfeit
Book:Pilots' Luck
Create image

“We are part of nature, a product of a long evolutionary journey. To some degree, we carry the ancient oceans in our blood. … Our brains and nervous systems did not suddenly spring into existence without long antecedents in natural history. That which we most prize as integral to our humanity - our extraordinary capacity to think on complex conceptual levels - can be traced back to the nerve network of primitive invertebrates, the ganglia of a mollusk, the spinal cord of a fish, the brain of an amphibian, and the cerebral cortex of a primate.”

ThinkingLongHumanityNaturalLevelsExistenceBrainBloodJourneyProductsDegreesOceanSpringCapacityComplexesExtraordinaryAncientFishesNervousPrizeNervesPrimitiveNervous SystemCordsCerebralPrimatesNatural HistorySpinal CordAmphibiansMollusksInvertebrates
Author:Murray Bookchin
Create image

“Presumably there are energies, to which each human is sensitive, that we cannot yet detect by means of our instruments. Built into our brains and our bodies are very sensitive tuneable receivers for energies that we do not yet know about in our science but that each one of us can detect under the proper circumstances and the proper state of mind. We can tune our nervous systems and bodies to receive these energies. We can also tune our brains and bodies to transmit these energies.”

KnowsMindHumansMeanStatesBodyEnergyBrainCircumstancesBuiltInstrumentsNervousSensitiveTunesState Of MindNervous SystemTransmitReceiver
Author:John C. Lilly
Create image

“Most of the different types of cells in our body die and are replaced every few weeks or months. However, neurons, the primary cell of the nervous system, do not multiply (for the most part) after we are born. That means that the majority of the neurons in your brain today are as old as you are. This longevity of the neurons partially accounts for why we feel pretty much the same on the inside at the age of 10 as we do at age 30 or 77.”

FeelsMeanDifferentBodyAgeTodayDiesBornBrainWeekTypeMonthsAccountsMajorityNervousCellsPrimariesLongevityReplacedNervous SystemNeuronsAge 30
Book:My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey
Create image

“If we analyze the operations of scenes of beauty upon the mind, and consider the intimate relation of the mind upon the nervous system and the whole physical economy, the action and reaction which constantly occur between bodily and mental conditions, the reinvigoration which results from such scenes is readily comprehended. . . . The enjoyment of scenery employs the mind without fatigue and yet exercises it; tranquilizes it and yet enlivens it; and thus, through the influence of the mind over the body gives the effect of refreshing rest and reinvigoration to the whole system.”

IfsGivingMindWholeBodyActionSpiritualityResultsBeautyEconomyInfluenceConditionsEffectsExerciseSceneRelationReactionsNervousOperationsIntimateEnjoymentGardeningFatigueSceneryNervous SystemRefreshingAction And Reaction
Book:Yosemite and the Mariposa grove: a preliminary report, 1865
Create image

“The patterns of activity of neurons in sensory areas can be altered by patterns of attention. Experience coupled with attention leads to physical changes in the structure and future functioning of the nervous system. This leaves us with a clear physiological fact…moment by moment we choose and sculpt how our ever-changing minds will work. We choose who we will be in the next moment in a very real sense, and these choices are left embossed in physical form in our material selves.”

MindRealSelfMomentsFactsFormChoicesNextLeftAttentionClearMaterialsActivityAreasStructurePatternsNervousAlteredNervous SystemSensoryNeuronsPhysiological
Author:Michael Merzenich
Create image

“The nervous system of any age or nation is its creative workers, its artists. And if that nervous system is profoundly disturbed by its environment, the work it produces will inescapably reflect the disturbances, sometimes obliquely and sometimes with violent directness.”

IfsSometimesAgeArtistNationsCreativeEnvironmentProduceWorkersTheatreViolentNervousCraftsWorking ItDisturbedNervous SystemDisturbanceCreative Work
Book:New Selected Essays: Where I Live
Create image