When I speak of artistic universals, I am not denying the enormous role played by culture. Obviously culture plays a tremendous role,… — Vilayanur S. Ramachandran Copy Share Image
Great art allows you to transcend your mortal frame and to reach for the stars. I think great science does the same… — Vilayanur S. Ramachandran Copy Share Image
People think of art and science as being fundamentally opposed to each other, because art is about celebrating individual human creativity, and… — Vilayanur S. Ramachandran Copy Share Image
Think about what artists, novelists and poets have in common: the ability to engage in metaphorical thinking, linking seemingly unrelated ideas, such… — Vilayanur S. Ramachandran Copy Share Image
What the artist tries to do (either consciously or unconsciously) is to not only capture the essence of something but also to… — Vilayanur S. Ramachandran Copy Share Image
You can't just take an image and randomly distort it and call it art - although many people in La Jolla where… — Vilayanur S. Ramachandran Copy Share Image
It may well be our brains are wired up to be slightly more optimistic than they should be. — Vilayanur S. Ramachandran Copy Share Image
If you're a thinking person, the liver is interesting, but nothing is more intriguing than the brain. — Vilayanur S. Ramachandran Copy Share Image
Even today no computer can understand language as well as a three-year-old or see as well as a mouse. — Vilayanur S. Ramachandran Copy Share Image
Without ducking responsibility, what's wrong with medicine today is that it is predicated on providing treatment, not on reducing suffering. Not on solving problems. — Vilayanur S. Ramachandran Copy Share Image
There is no real independent self, aloof from other human beings, inspecting the world, inspecting other people. You are, in fact, connected not just… — Vilayanur S. Ramachandran Copy Share Image
A culture without mythology is not really a civilisation. — Vilayanur S. Ramachandran Copy Share Image
The boundary between neurology and psychiatry is becoming increasingly blurred, and its only a matter of time before psychiatry becomes just another branch of… — Vilayanur S. Ramachandran Copy Share Image
The visual system of the brain has the organization, computational profile, and architecture it has in order to facilitate the organism's thriving at the… — Vilayanur S. Ramachandran Copy Share Image
Remember that politics, colonialism, imperialism and war also originate in the human brain. — Vilayanur S. Ramachandran Copy Share Image
The minute you succumb to outside pressure, you cease to be creative. — Vilayanur S. Ramachandran Copy Share Image
When I speak of artistic universals, I am not denying the enormous role played by culture. Obviously culture plays a tremendous role, otherwise you… — Vilayanur S. Ramachandran Copy Share Image
Great art allows you to transcend your mortal frame and to reach for the stars. I think great science does the same thing. — Vilayanur S. Ramachandran Copy Share Image
Lofty questions about the mind are fascinating to ask, philosophers have been asking them for three millennia both in India where I am from… — Vilayanur S. Ramachandran Copy Share Image
Here is this three-pound mass of jelly you can hold in the palm of your hand, and it can contemplate the vastness of interstellar… — Vilayanur S. Ramachandran Copy Share Image
