A culture without mythology is not really a civilisation.

Curiosity illuminates the correct path to anything in life. If you're not curious, that's when your brain is starting to die.

Your conscious life is an elaborate after-the-fact rationalization of things you really do for other reasons.

What the neurology tells us is that the self consists of many components, and the notion of one unitary self may well be an illusion.

People often ask how I got interested in the brain; my rhetorical answer is: 'How can anyone NOT be interested in it?' Everything you call 'human nature' and consciousness arises from it.

With the arrival of humans, it has been said, the universe has suddenly become conscious of itself. This, truly, it the greatest mystery of all.

Great art allows you to transcend your mortal frame and to reach for the stars. I think great science does the same thing.

Our ability to perceive the world around us seems so effortless that we tend to take it for granted.

The adage that fact is stranger than fiction seems to be especially true for the workings of the brain.

A genius is somebody who seemingly just reaches out of nowhere.

Remember that politics, colonialism, imperialism and war also originate in the human brain.

Live each day as if your life had just begun.

Dreaming in public is an important part of our job description, as science writers, but there are bad dreams as well as good dreams. We're dreamers, you see, but we're also realists, of a sort.

Like fragile ice anger passes away in time.

My faith dictates a whole lot of what I'll do.

Fornication: but that was in another country; And besides, the wench is dead.

To see the ball, to run after it, makes me the happiest man in the world

We Californians can watch the Weather Channel for images of winter's brutality unleashed upon our fellow Americans and thank our lucky stars we don't have to contend with it.

I will fight for your right to be weird- just as I know you will fight for mine.

Decrements in attention and concentration, being able to learn more efficiently, that's just not as good. Also, there are motor vehicle accidents, workplace accidents, we see that a lot.

A home without a dog is merely a shelter.