There is no memory or retentive faculty based on lasting impression. What we designate as memory is but increased responsiveness to repeated stimuli.
Interpretation
Memory is not a reliable retention of experiences, but rather a heightened response to familiar stimuli.
In this quote, Nikola Tesla reflects on the nature of memory, suggesting that what we commonly understand as memory is not a perfect recording of past events, but rather an enhanced ability to respond to familiar situations due to repeated exposure. This perspective challenges the idea of memory as an infallible storage of information, highlighting instead the fluid and responsive nature of how we recall experiences.
In practice
In a psychology class discussing the nature of memory and perception.
Even matter called inorganic, believed to be dead, responds to irritants and gives unmistakable evidence of a living principle within. Everything that exists, organic or inorganic, animated or inert, is susceptible to stimulus from the outside.
Our senses enable us to perceive only a minute portion of the outside world.
Every living being is an engine geared to the wheelwork of the universe. Though seemingly affected only by its immediate surrounding, the sphere of external influence extends to infinite distance.
The history of science shows that theories are perishable. With every new truth that is revealed we get a better understanding of Nature and our conceptions and views are modified.
The Secretary of Hygiene or Physical Culture will be far more important in the cabinet of the President of the United States who holds office in the year 2035 than the Secretary of War.
I am unwilling to accord to some small−minded and jealous individuals the satisfaction of having thwarted my efforts. These men are to me nothing more than microbes of a nasty disease. My project was retarded by laws of nature. The world was not prepared for it. It was too far ahead of time, but the same laws will prevail in the end and make it a triumphal success.
Here is everything which can lay hold of the eye, ear and imagination - everything which can charm and bewitch the simple and ignorant. I wonder how Luther ever broke the spell.
'What is' is more important than 'what should be.' Too many people are looking at 'what is' from a position of thinking 'what should be'.
You call for faith: I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists. The more of doubt, the stronger faith, I say, If faith o'ercomes doubt.
Jesus resolved the false opposition between obedience and freedom and opened the path to freedom
To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him.
Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
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