Memory Quotes (5)

... the most essential characteristic of mind is memory, using this word in its broadest sense to include every influence of past experience on present reactions...
Portraits from Memory and Other Essays
See also:  |  Mind (37)

Heraldry has been contemptuously termed 'the science of fools with long memories.'
The Pursuivant of Arms: Or, Heraldry Founded Upon Facts (1873), 3.
See also:  |  Fool (5)  |  Science (225)

Is no one inspired by our present picture of the universe? This value of science remains unsung by singers: you are reduced to hearing not a song or poem, but an evening lecture about it. This is not yet a scientific age.
Perhaps one of the reasons for this silence is that you have to know how to read music. For instance, the scientific article may say, 'The radioactive phosphorus content of the cerebrum of the rat decreases to one- half in a period of two weeks.' Now what does that mean?
It means that phosphorus that is in the brain of a rat—and also in mine, and yours—is not the same phosphorus as it was two weeks ago. It means the atoms that are in the brain are being replaced: the ones that were there before have gone away.
So what is this mind of ours: what are these atoms with consciousness? Last week's potatoes! They now can remember what was going on in my mind a year ago—a mind which has long ago been replaced. To note that the thing I call my individuality is only a pattern or dance, that is what it means when one discovers how long it takes for the atoms of the brain to be replaced by other atoms. The atoms come into my brain, dance a dance, and then go out—there are always new atoms, but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday.
'What do You Care What Other People Think?' Further Adventures of a Curious Character (1988), 244.
See also:  |  Brain (28)  |  Phosphorus (4)

Memory is the thing you forget with.
Perspectives (1966). In Memory (1999), 71.

[In an established surgical practice] there is a ghost in every bed [and fortunately] surgeons get long lives and short memories.
Anonymous
In B.J. Moran, 'Decision-making and technical factors account for the learning curve in complex surgery', Journal of Public Health (2006), 28375-378.
See also:  |  Surgeon (15)

back arrow
Custom search within only our quotations pages:
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:

Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology. Source citations are usually given - if you know any missing information on sources, please contact us.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |






If you find this site useful, please add a link from your site.


Today in Science History
Quotations
by scientists, inventors, on science and more.
- Go To Index -

Today in Science
Science Store
A selection of interesting science books, dvds and learning products for gifts or yourself.
Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations
To introduce you to our Science store, a 22% savings on:
Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations
Oxford Univ Press, 736 pp.
List $18.95.
Price: $14.78.
Original words on great scientific discoveries.
Darwin considers pros and cons of marriage.
James Clerk Maxwell's electric but poetic Valentine.
I have little patience with scientists who take a board of wood, look for its thinnest part and drill a great number of holes where drilling is easy. --Albert Einstein
I try to identify myself with the atoms...I ask what I would do if I were a carbon atom or a sodium atom. --Linus Pauling




5,516,587











Locations of visitors to this page