David Eagleman

“The enemy of memory isn’t time; it’s other memories.”

— David Eagleman

There is a looming chasm between what your brain knows and what your mind is capable of accessing.

— David Eagleman

There are an infinite number of boring things to do in science.

— David Eagleman

Every atom in your body is the same quark in different places at the same moment in time.

— David Eagleman

We are not the ones driving the boat of our behavior, at least not nearly as much as we believe.

— David Eagleman

“Platoons and plays and stores and congresses do not end - they simply move on to a different dimension.”

— David Eagleman

I think what a life in science really teaches you is the vastness of our ignorance.

— David Eagleman

We believe we're seeing the world just fine until it's called to our attention that we're not.

— David Eagleman

Part of the scientific temperament is this tolerance for holding multiple hypotheses in mind at the same time.

— David Eagleman

Our internal life and external actions are steered by biological coctails to which we have neither immediate access nor direct acquaintance.

— David Eagleman

Knowing yourself now requires the understanding that the conscious you occupies only a small room in the mansion of the brain, and…

— David Eagleman

People wouldn't even go into science unless there was something much bigger to be discovered, something that is transcendent.

— David Eagleman

“Nothing is inherently tasty or repulsive—it depends on your needs. Deliciousness is simply an index of usefulness.”

— David Eagleman

“So the first lesson about trusting your senses is: don’t. Just because you believe something to be true, just because you know…

— David Eagleman

If choices and decisions derive from hidden mental processes, then free choice is either an illusion or, at minimum, more tightly constrained…

— David Eagleman

The continuous networks of neural circuitry accomplish their functions using multiple, independently discovered strategies. The brain lends itself well to the complexity…

— David Eagleman

All activity in the brain is driven by other activity in the brain, in a vastly complex, interconnected network.

— David Eagleman

In our current understanding of science, we can't find the physical gap in which to slip free will - the uncaused causer…

— David Eagleman

It is more parsimonious to assume that the sun goes around the Earth, that atoms at the smallest scale operate in accordance…

— David Eagleman

Reductionism is not the right viewpoint for everything, and it certainly won't explain the relationship between the brain and the mind. This…

— David Eagleman

It turns out that dopamine is a chemical on double duty in the brain. Along with its role in motor commands, it…

— David Eagleman

In my view, the argument from parsimony is really no argument at all - it typically functions only to shut down more…

— David Eagleman

The three-pound organ in your skull - with its pink consistency of Jell-o - is an alien kind of computational material. It…

— David Eagleman

Constant reminding ourselves that we not see with our eyes but with our synergetic eye-brain system working as a whole will produce…

— David Eagleman

When people fall in love, there´s period of up to three years during which the zeal and infatuation ride at a peak.…

— David Eagleman

“In 1714, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz argued that matter alone could never produce a mind. Leibniz was a German philosopher, mathematician, and scientist…

— David Eagleman

“Since you always lived inside your own head, you were much better at seeing the truth about others than you ever were…

— David Eagleman

We are nothing but the product of billions of years of molecules coming together and ratcheting up through natural selection, we are…

— David Eagleman

“This moment of lucidity does not last long. But it serves as the punishment for your sins, a Promethean entrails-pecking moment, crouching…

— David Eagleman

“If biological algorithms are the important part of what makes us who we are, rather than the physical stuff, then it’s a…

— David Eagleman

The brain "fills in" the missing information from the blind spot. Notice what you see in the location of the dot when…

— David Eagleman

“If an epileptic seizure is focused in a particular sweet spot in the temporal lobe, a person won´t have motor seizures, but…

— David Eagleman

If you cannot always elicit a straight answer from the unconscious brain, how can you access its knowledge? Sometimes the trick is…

— David Eagleman

Because vision appears so effortless, we are like fish challenged to understand water.

— David Eagleman

Everybody knows the power of deadlines - and we all hate them. But their effectiveness is undeniable.

— David Eagleman

...you are battered and bruised in the collisions between reminiscence and reality.

— David Eagleman

Just like a good drama, the human brain runs on conflict.

— David Eagleman

Behavior is the outcome of the battle among internal systems.

— David Eagleman

The main thing known about secrets is that keeping them is unhealthy for the brain.

— David Eagleman

We are not conscious of most things until we ask ourselves questions about them.

— David Eagleman