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All human states are organic brain states - happiness, sadness, fear, lust, dreaming, doing math problems and writing novels - and our brains are not static.
Siri Hustvedt
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Human emotions and thoughts are deeply connected to our brain's organic functioning.

This quote highlights the idea that all human experiences, whether they be emotions like happiness and sadness or cognitive processes like problem-solving and creativity, are rooted in the brain's organic states. It suggests that our mental states are dynamic and constantly evolving, influenced by the biological and neurological processes within us.

Themes

BrainEmotionsHuman ExperienceOrganic StatesNeuroscience

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be used in a psychology class to discuss the relationship between brain states and emotions.

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Perception plays a vital role in the diagnosis of bipolar illness. Symptoms are perceived through the categories of psychiatric medicine at a given moment in history, categories which are continually shifting and being named or renamed.
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under our love making I felt a bleakness that couldnt be dispelled. The sadness was in both of us, and I think we pitied ourselves that night, as if we were other people looking down on the couple who lay together on the bed
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People who grow up with two or more languages understand that each can express certain aspects of reality better than the other.
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The recollections of an older man are different from those of a younger man. What seemed vital at forty may lose its significance at seventy. We manufacture stories, after all, from the fleeting sensory material that bombards us at every instant, a fragmented series of pictures, conversations, odors, and the touch of things and people. We delete most of it to live with some semblance of order, and the reshuffling of memory goes on until we die.
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