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.

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.

A culture without mythology is not really a civilisation.

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.

Don't judge your success by what people think of you. You are your own success.Your determination and perserverence is what matters.

Matter is real to my senses, but they aren't trustworthy. If Galileo or Copernicus had accepted what they saw, they would never have discovered the movement of the earth and planets.

I was always younger than anyone around me. One day it began to change.

In America, we believe in peace through strength, and that's what we will have.

I don't know that I necessarily feel more comfortable in the context of smaller films, but I tend to feel more comfortable more often than not with the material of smaller films.

While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered animals, how can we expect any ideal living conditions on this earth?

in a way it doesn't matter whether you open doors or close them, you still end up in a box.

Science progresses not by convincing the adherents of old theories that they are wrong, but by allowing enough time to pass so that a new generation can arise unencumbered by the old errors.

Marriage, my dear, is not suicide.

Your friends, family, and kids have to understand that's your priority. It's the only way you can be successful.