Joshua Foer

“One book, printed in the Heart’s own wax / Is worth a thousand in the stacks.”

— Joshua Foer

Our culture is an edifice built of externalized memories.

— Joshua Foer

What makes things memorable is that they are meaningful, significant, colorful.

— Joshua Foer

“paradox—it takes knowledge to gain knowledge—is”

— Joshua Foer

...who we are and what we do it is fundamentally a function of what we remember.

— Joshua Foer

To improve, we must watch ourselves fail, and learn from our mistakes.

— Joshua Foer

Part of being creative is not being super-duper focused.

— Joshua Foer

Monotony collapses time. Novelty unfolds it.

— Joshua Foer

“We all have remarkable capacities asleep inside of us. If only we bothered ourselves to awaken them.”

— Joshua Foer

The more we remember, the better we are at processing the world. And the better we are at processing the world, the…

— Joshua Foer

Our lives are the sum of our memories. How much are we willing to lose from our already short lives by ……

— Joshua Foer

The way to get better at a skill is to force yourself to practice just beyond your limits.

— Joshua Foer

“Life seems to speed up as we get older because life gets less memorable as we get older. “If to remember is…

— Joshua Foer

“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

Memory is like a spiderweb that catches new information. The more it catches, the bigger it grows. And the bigger it grows,…

— Joshua Foer

Memory training is not just for the sake of performing party tricks; it's about nurturing something profoundly and essentially human.

— Joshua Foer

To attain the rank of grand master of memory, you must be able to perform three seemingly superhuman feats. You have to…

— Joshua Foer

“He explains that learning texts is worth doing not because it’s easy but because it’s hard. “I believe that they who wish…

— Joshua Foer

When I climb into my car, I enter my destination into a GPS device, whose spatial memory supplants my own. I have…

— Joshua Foer

What distinguishes a great mnemonist, I learned, is the ability to create lavish images on the fly, to paint in the mind…

— Joshua Foer

All across Africa, the Pacific and the Americas, we find cultures that didn't know about mouth kissing until their first contact with…

— Joshua Foer

“If the essence of creativity is linking disparate facts and ideas, then the more facility you have making associations, and the more…

— Joshua Foer

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

Our ability to find humor in the world, to make connections between previously unconnected notions, to create new ideas, to share in…

— Joshua Foer

“Notice that the process of chunking takes seemingly meaningless information and reinterprets it in light of information that is already stored away…

— Joshua Foer

“More than anyone I’d ever met, he seemed to participate in life as if it were art, and to practice a studied,…

— Joshua Foer

“If memory is our means of preserving that which we consider most valuable, it is also painfully linked to our own transience.…

— Joshua Foer

“I’m working on expanding subjective time so that it feels like I live longer,” Ed had mumbled to me on the sidewalk…

— Joshua Foer

“Though advances in imaging technology have allowed neuroscientists to grasp much of the basic topography of the brain, and studies of neurons…

— Joshua Foer

“Without time, there would be no need for a memory. But without a memory, would there be such a thing as time?…

— Joshua Foer

“Forgotten phone numbers and birthdays represent minor erosions of our everyday memory, but they are part of a much larger story of…

— Joshua Foer

“Bruce Miller, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco, studies elderly patients with a relatively common form of brain disease…

— Joshua Foer

“Ben developed a similarly Byzantine system for memorizing binary digits, which enables him to convert any ten-digit-long string of ones and zeros…

— Joshua Foer

“I don’t think I’m an exceptionally bad reader. I suspect that many people, maybe even most, are like me. We read and…

— Joshua Foer

“If you visit London, you’ll occasionally cross paths with young men (and less often women) on motor scooters, blithely darting in and…

— Joshua Foer

“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

“If they’re not practicing deliberately, even experts can see their skills backslide. Ericsson shared with me an incredible example of this. Even…

— Joshua Foer

“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

“Few of us make any serious effort to remember what we read. When I read a book, what do I hope will…

— Joshua Foer

“Thamus was reluctant to accept the gift. “If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls,” he told the god.…

— Joshua Foer