The conscious mind is not at the center of the action in the brain; instead, it is far out on a distant edge, hearing but whispers of the activity.
David EaglemanRead
It turns out your conscious mind - the part you think of as you - is really the smallest part of what’s happening in your brain, and usually the last one in line to find out any information.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Our conscious mind is not as dominant as we believe; much of our brain's activity occurs beneath our awareness.
David Eagleman's quote highlights the complex workings of the human brain, suggesting that our conscious thoughts are just a small fraction of the overall mental processes. It emphasizes that the majority of cognitive functions occur at a subconscious level, often preceding our conscious awareness, challenging the belief that we are fully in control of our thoughts and actions.
Themes
Conscious MindSubconsciousBrainCognitionAwareness
In practice
Example use cases
In a presentation about the brain's complexities, one might quote this to illustrate the limitations of conscious thought.
More from David Eagleman
All quotes →The three-pound organ in your skull - with its pink consistency of Jell-o - is an alien kind of computational material. It is composed of miniaturized, self-configuring parts, and it vastly outstrips anything we've dreamt of building.
David EaglemanRead
You´re not perceiving what's out there. You're perceiving whatever your brain tells you.
David EaglemanRead
Similar quotes
By definition, big data cannot yield complicated descriptions of causality. Especially in healthcare. Almost all of our diseases occur in the intersections of systems in the body.
Clayton M. ChristensenRead
After exponential quantities the circular functions, sine and cosine, should be considered because they arise when imaginary quantities are involved in the exponential.
Leonhard EulerRead
There is no example of someone reading their scripture and saying, 'I have a prediction about the world that no one knows yet, because this gave me insight. Let's go test that prediction,' and have the prediction be correct.
Neil Degrasse TysonRead
Our role is to develop techniques that allow us to provide emergency life-saving procedures to injured patients in an extreme, remote environment without the presence of a physician.
Chris HadfieldRead
I think that the future of the human race is to spread through the universe, and now is the time that we should be laying the foundations for that.
Kip ThorneRead
Before the discovery of quantum mechanics, the framework of physics was this: If you tell me how things are now, I can then use the laws of physics to calculate, and hence predict, how things will be later.
Brian GreeneRead