Quotes by Neuroscientists - Page 7

I don’t want to take away anybody’s religion, but simply to make them see what religion really means.
Abhijit Naskar
Let your children nourish their knack, for that knack shall one day provide them with the way to live with dignity and contentment.
Abhijit Naskar
Beauty is an illusion, created by Mother Nature to drive the human species in the path of reproduction. In reality, beauty is irrelevant to human life, especially in a relationship. What you today perceive as beautiful and special, over time, becomes not so special. That’s how the human brain works. It is not beauty that keeps a relationship alive, it is attachment. Without attachment, a naked body is merely a lifeless sex toy.
Abhijit Naskar
There are just some things that are outside of comprehension, even if we can quantify them. At some point, science becomes magic.
Jay Hosking
Hard as it may sound, no god has saved anything or anyone in human history. It is the humans who have done so.
Abhijit Naskar
When I am fully immersed in my work of nourishing humanity, it fills my head with all kinds of feel-good chemicals, such as endorphins, serotonin and dopamine. Problems occur during the brief intervals between the finishing of one work and the beginning of another. During these intervals, my biology starts to get filled with stress hormones cortisol and adrenalin, that worsens my OCD. That is why, I can’t sit still even a day after I finish writing a book. Because if I do, my OCD begins to suffocate me inside my head. Hence, as soon as I deliver a work, I have to start working on my next scientific literature.
Abhijit Naskar
When two people fall in love, they not only give up their genuine authority over their own lives, but also, they become mutual authorities of the collective life that they build together.
Abhijit Naskar
First know the Self and then talk of social reformation.
Abhijit Naskar
There is nothing ideal in Nature, because it was not created by some sort of ideal Almighty Being with perfect peerless craftsmanship. Nature as it is, has evolved through millions of years out of the biological drive for survival.
Abhijit Naskar
Ideally, friends are people with whom we can be our true selves, with whom we can fearlessly let our guard down. (Arguably, a close friend is someone with whom we can allow ourselves to enter the daydreaming attentional mode, with whom we can switch in and out of our different modes of attention without feeling awkward.)
Daniel J. Levitin
I – the eternal idea of oneness, have said this before – and now in the century 21st, say once again - Awake, my friend! Arise, my friend! Start walking my friend! And do not stop until you bring the change you wish to see in your society!
Abhijit Naskar
No one is an outside observer of nature,We're defined by our environment and our interaction with that environment -- by our ecology. And that ecology is necessarily relative, historical and empirical.
Beau Lotto
Feeling had controlling influence over those primitive people, not thinking. It played a crucial part in the evolutionary development of modern humans. That’s why we humans are basically an emotional species alongside being the smartest one.
Abhijit Naskar
The truth, however, is that most Muslims appear to be "fundamental-ist" in the Western sense of the word—in that even "moderate"approaches to Islam generally consider the Koran to be the literal andinerrant word of the one true God. The difference between funda-mentalists and moderates—and certainly the difference between all"extremists" and moderates—is the degree to which they see politicaland military action to be intrinsic to the practice of their faith. In anycase, people who believe that Islam must inform every dimension ofhuman existence, including politics and law, are now generally callednot "fundamentalists" or "extremists" but, rather, "Islamists.
Sam Harris
Sophistication is not science people, simplicity is.
Abhijit Naskar
If there is a God you must see it (literally), even clearer than you see this page, otherwise it is better not to believe. It is better to be an outspoken atheist, than a hypocrite.
Abhijit Naskar
You can't take credit for your talents, but it matters that you use them. You can't really be blamed for your weaknesses, but it matters that you correct them. So pride and shame don't make a lot of sense, in the final analysis, but they weren't much fun anyway.
Sam Harris
Do not force your mind to get rid of random thoughts, because your brain is simply not capable of doing so. Instead, when you sit to practise meditation, let the thoughts come and go, just don’t serve them tea. Over time, that background noise inside your head would disappear.
Abhijit Naskar
No institution can become the cradle of leadership, until its teachers break their manacles of rugged dogmas.
Abhijit Naskar
Science without Philosophy leads to chaos. Philosophy without Science leads to nowhere. Only together they can construct a better world.
Abhijit Naskar
You never want one thing at any given moment of life. Your mind always comes up with at least two choices. If your limbic system wins, the choice you make seems to be pleasurable at first but in the long run ends up being the wrong one. And if your prefrontal cortex wins the choice you make may appear rough at first, but in the long run it turns out to be the right one.
Abhijit Naskar
I was working in silence seeking no appreciation or respect from any one. And it is always the silence from which great literature is born.
Abhijit Naskar
Many great leaders understand intuitively that they need to work hard to create a sense of safety in others. In this way, great leaders are often humble leaders, thereby reducing the status threat. Great leaders provide clear expectations and talk a lot about the future, helping to increase certainty. Great leaders let others take charge and make decisions, increasing autonomy. Great leaders often have a strong presence, which comes from working hard to be authentic and real with other people, to create a sense of relatedness. And great leaders keep their promises, taking care to be perceived as fair.
David Rock
The divinity you seek is born with you.
Abhijit Naskar
There is no such thing as Hardcore Philosophy or Hardcore Science. Real Science and Real Philosophy do not destroy each other, they simply fulfil and enrich each other.
Abhijit Naskar
Just as there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim Algebra, we will see tht there is no such thing as Christian or Muslim morality.
Sam Harris
If I ask you, are you conscious right now? You'd go right ahead and tell me - yes. That's because your conscious mind is constructing an awareness in you about everything around you. And underneath that operation of your conscious mind, there are billions of neurons working in proper harmony.
Abhijit Naskar
Science works through replication, rectification and modification. But when it comes to religion, people simply tend to accept the theoretical preachers and their claims of historical God experiences without a single question. If there has been one experience in this world in any branch of knowledge, it absolutely follows that that experience will be repeated eternally. If they are not repeated through natural processes, the thinking humanity would have no way but to disprove that such an experience ever occurred in the history.
Abhijit Naskar
When you don’t have explanation for a certain phenomenon, as a real human, you should suspend judgement, instead of concocting supernatural explanations out of ignorance and primordial fanaticism.
Abhijit Naskar
Once a baby is born, the parents have around one and a half decades to build his or her character and fill the mind with vigour and virtues.
Abhijit Naskar
Persistence in the face of failure is of course important, but it is not the same thing as dedication or passion. Persistence is a discipline that you learn; devotion is a dedication you can't ignore.
Stuart Firestein
Denial of the Self accomplishes nothing.
Abhijit Naskar
Christ’s public life extended only over three years, and for this he had been silently training his mind for around thirty years. For years he had been breaking all the sociologically imposed ties of religious fundamentalism. For years he had been working in solitude to become liberated from the manacles of dogmatic bondage. And it is in the solitude that legends are born, and idiots are born in packs.
Abhijit Naskar
I am a scientist who studies the human mind, including the sexual differences in mental faculties, and I am telling you, ten female thinkers can teach humanity lessons equivalent to the teachings of a hundred male thinkers of history.
Abhijit Naskar
In the society of thinking humanity, the natural law of trust should be - In I, I trust.
Abhijit Naskar
In the hands of blood-sucking monsters a scripture becomes a weapon that takes away humanism from the heart of humans and fills them with hate, rage and selfishness, whereas, in the hands of modern human beings the same scripture can become the greatest philosophical tool to endow the species with goodness and compassion.
Abhijit Naskar
How frightening, that one person could mean so much, so many things.
Colleen McCullough
Any idea of separation is bondage. True liberation of the mind is in non-differentiation. And in the pursuit of breaking free from all the shackles of such man-made bondages, science is the most effective tool we have till this date. But in order to bring out all its effectiveness into the human society, it must be sweetened first with the touch of philosophy. Science without Philosophy leads to chaos. Philosophy without Science leads to nowhere. Only together they can construct a better world.
Abhijit Naskar
If you have assimilated even one idea and made it your life, you have more education than any person who has got by heart the entire Library of Congress.
Abhijit Naskar
Good and evil are both fundamental features of the human mind.
Abhijit Naskar
I am an advocate of godliness, not of god.
Abhijit Naskar
If a person takes comfort in his or her faith upon divinity in times of distress, then who the hell am I to say, that the person is delusional.
Abhijit Naskar
When these flies were put together in all-male groups they formed long, moving chains resembling conga lines, with each male attempting (unsuccessfully) to mate with the male in front of it.
Simon LeVay
Politics means implementation of the best ideas for the society in the path of wellbeing and progress. This is the approach that gave the world, leaders of glorious characters such as Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Subhas Chandra Bose (the actual man behind India’s Independence), Vasil Levski (the man who liberated Bulgaria from the Ottoman oppression), Nelson Mandela and many more. These people were technically politicians too, but unlike the majority of the politicians ofmodern society, their approach to politics was what it should be in a real system of politics.
Abhijit Naskar
There can never be a conflict between science and religion, once you understand the spiritual knack of the human brain circuits.
Abhijit Naskar
Accepting the fact that she did indeed have Alzheimer's, that she could only bank on two unacceptably effective drugs available to treat it, and that she couldn't trade any of this in for some other, curable disease, what did she want? Assuming the in vitro procedure worked, she wanted to live to hold Anna's baby and know it was her grandchild. She wanted to see Lydia act in something she was proud of. She wanted to see Tom fall in love. She wanted one more sabbatical year with John. She wanted to read every book she could before she could no longer read.She laughed a little, surprised at what she'd just revealed about herself. Nowhere in that list was anything about linguistics, teaching, or Harvard. She ate her last bite of cone. She wanted more sunny, seventy-degree days and ice-cream cones.
Lisa Genova
Once the lotus of your inner divinity gets full-blown and you reach the mental state where all the religious giants of human history experienced the all-encompassing sense of godliness, the exuberance of the human mind turns infinite. Awakening into that state makes all the perceptual limitations of the mind disappear, just like a bucket of muddy water turns crystal-clear once poured into the ocean.
Abhijit Naskar
Suddenly the thought that the end of her life was imminent shocked him; it was one thing to pity someone he didn't know, quite another to face the same dilemma with someone he knew intimately. That was the trouble with beds. They turned strangers into intimates more quickly than ten years of polite teas in parlours.
Colleen McCullough
As human being, we live in a perpetual conversation between conversation and violence; what apart from fundamental willingness to be reasonable, can guarantee that we will keep talking to one another?
Sam Harris
The human mind has a primordial affinity towards ideas of miracles and mysticism, especially, in times of weakness.
Abhijit Naskar
Prosthetics can fix physical disabilities. But no prosthetic can fix an amputated spirit. So, don't let the society devoid you from your own spirit. Be brave and upright, and delve into even the depth of doom to achieve your goal.
Abhijit Naskar
Mothers and fathers are born everywhere. What the world needs are leaders.
Abhijit Naskar
Character- building education is what the world needs – education, that will empower the mind with such an unimaginable strength that one would meet death face to face and say “some other time, pal!
Abhijit Naskar
It is much easier to concentrate the mind on external things, than to concentrate on the mind itself. For example, a Neuroscientist can be the smartest man (or woman) on earth in his understanding of the human mind. He may know all the neurochemical changes underlying an outrageous behavior of a person. But when he gets mad himself, very little of his own scientific intellect would actually come in handy for him to control his rage. The virtue of self-control is a skill, which requires practice, regardless of all the neurobiological expertise in the world.
Abhijit Naskar
Science is never rigid, it is flexible. It can bend towards any direction that ultimately tends to do good to humanity. Religion must learn the same. And the moment any religion learns that, it would become the most scientific religion in the world.
Abhijit Naskar
Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance.
Sam Harris
If faith is what you have to go on, if faith is the link between your beliefs and the world at large, your beliefs are very likely to be wrong. Beliefs can be right or wrong. If you believe you can fly, that belief is only true if indeed you can fly. Somebody who thinks he can fly, and is wrong about it, will eventually discover there's a problem with his view of the world.
Sam Harris
The service of humanity, is the service of God.
Abhijit Naskar
Without the harmonious electrochemical activity of all the brain structure, the very thing which we call "mind", would suddenly disappear from the face of earth.
Abhijit Naskar
... just because [butterflies'] lives were short didn't mean they were tragic... See, they have a beautiful life.
Lisa Genova