...who we are and what we do it is fundamentally a function of what we remember. — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“In a sense, the elaborate system of externalized memory we’ve created is a way of fending off mortality.” — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“(The phrase “in the first place” is a vestige from the art of memory.)” — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
The best memorizers in the world - who almost all hail from Europe - can memorize a pack of cards in less… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
One trick, known as the journey method or 'memory palace,' is to conjure up a familiar space in the mind's eye, and… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
Memory is like a spiderweb that catches new information. The more it catches, the bigger it grows. And the bigger it grows,… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“Sometimes I’d take off my earmuffs and memory goggles and turn around to discover that my father had been standing in the… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
We've outsourced our memories to digital devices, and the result is that we no longer trust our memories. We see every small… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
Memory training is not just for the sake of performing party tricks; it's about nurturing something profoundly and essentially human. — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“Over the last few millennial, we've invented a series of technologies … that have made it progressively easier and easier for us… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
The more we remember, the better we are at processing the world. And the better we are at processing the world, the… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
If you want to make information stick, it's best to learn it, go away from it for a while, come back to… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
To attain the rank of grand master of memory, you must be able to perform three seemingly superhuman feats. You have to… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
When I climb into my car, I enter my destination into a GPS device, whose spatial memory supplants my own. I have… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“If the essence of creativity is linking disparate facts and ideas, then the more facility you have making associations, and the more… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
What distinguishes a great mnemonist, I learned, is the ability to create lavish images on the fly, to paint in the mind… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
We've forgotten how to remember, and just as importantly, we've forgotten how to pay attention. So, instead of using your smartphone to… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
With our blogs and tweets, digital cameras, and unlimited-gigabyte e-mail archives, participation in the online culture now means creating a trail of… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
Many memory techniques involve creating unforgettable imagery, in your minds eye. Thats an act of imagination. Creating really weird imagery really quickly… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“If memory is our means of preserving that which we consider most valuable, it is also painfully linked to our own transience.… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“Notice that the process of chunking takes seemingly meaningless information and reinterprets it in light of information that is already stored away… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“Thamus was reluctant to accept the gift. “If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls,” he told the god.… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
Now more than ever, as the role of memory in our culture erodes at a faster pace than ever before, we need… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“So why bother investing in one’s memory in an age of externalized memories? The best answer I can give is the one… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“How we perceive the world and how we act in it are products of how and what we remember...No lasting joke, invention,… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“How we perceive the world and how we act in it are products of how and what we remember. We’re all just… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
Our lives are the sum of our memories. How much are we willing to lose from our already short lives by …… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
Our ability to find humor in the world, to make connections between previously unconnected notions, to create new ideas, to share in… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
As bad as we are at remembering names and phone numbers and word-for-word instructions from our colleagues, we have really exceptional visual… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
I met with amnesiacs and savants, educators and scientists, to try to understand what memory is, why it works, why it sometimes… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
To the extent that experience is the sum of our memories and wisdom the sum of experience, having a better memory would… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
Just as we accumulate memories of facts by integrating them into a network, we accumulate life experiences by integrating them into a… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
Once upon a time, this idea of having a trained, disciplined, cultivated memory was not nearly so alien as it would seem… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
Photographic memory is often confused with another bizarre - but real - perceptual phenomenon called eidetic memory, which occurs in between 2… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
The art and science of memory is about developing the capacity to quickly create images that link disparate ideas. Creativity is the… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“I Came away from the U.S. Memory Championship eager to find out how Ed and Lukas did it. Were these just extraordinary… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
Many memory techniques involve creating unforgettable imagery, in your mind's eye. That's an act of imagination. Creating really weird imagery really quickly… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“Without time, there would be no need for a memory. But without a memory, would there be such a thing as time?… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
Jonah Lehrer is one of the most talented explainers of science that we’ve got. What a pleasure it is to follow his investigation of… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“I don’t think I’m an exceptionally bad reader. I suspect that many people, maybe even most, are like me. We read and read and… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
Life seems to speed up as we get older because life gets less memorable as we get older. — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
With our blogs and tweets, digital cameras, and unlimited-gigabyte e-mail archives, participation in the online culture now means creating a trail of always present,… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
How much are we willing to lose from our already short lives by losing ourselves in our Blackberries, our iPhones, by not paying attention… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“I Came away from the U.S. Memory Championship eager to find out how Ed and Lukas did it. Were these just extraordinary individuals, pridigies… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
The 'OK Plateau' is that place we all get to where we just stop getting better at something. Take typing, for example. You might… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“One book, printed in the Heart’s own wax / Is worth a thousand in the stacks.” — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
Languages are something of a mess. They evolve over centuries through an unplanned, democratic process that leaves them teeming with irregularities, quirks, and words… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
Invented languages have often been created in tandem with entire invented universes, and most conlangers come to their craft by way of fantasy and… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“Perhaps, as Borges concludes in his story, it is forgetting, not remembering, that is the essence of what makes us human.” — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
