Brain Damaged Quotes & Sayings

These were "fossil behaviors," Darwinian vestiges of earlier times brought out of physiological limbo by the stimulation of primitive brain-stem systems, damaged and sensitized by the encephalitis in the first place, and now "awakened" by L-dopa.1 I — Oliver Sacks

I was worried that my exuberant drug use had damaged my brain and my nervous system and maybe even my soul in some irreparable and perhaps not readily apparent way. — Donna Tartt

Science is showing us that there are neurological (brain) factors that contribute to self-control and willpower, along with learning and upbringing. And when these brain systems are functioning improperly or become damaged, normal levels of self-control and willpower are impossible. — Russell Barkley

Love? Do you mean love in the way you understand it
as a human?"
"Well, not exactly, but basically the same thing. I mean,
love is love."
"A brain surgeon would tell you that a specific part of
the brain controls the ability to love. If it's damaged, people
are incapable of love, incapable of caring about others."
"So?"
"So, isn't it arrogant to think that the love generated by
our little brains is the same thing that an omnipotent being
experiences? If you were omnipotent, why would you limit
yourself to something that could be reproduced by a little
clump of neurons? — Scott Adams

Talking to a drunk person was like talking to an extremely happy, severely brain-damaged three-year-old. — John Green

Neurologists have a host of clinical tests that let them observe what a brain-damaged patient can and cannot do. — Floyd Skloot

Human beings are powered by emotion, not by reason Study after study has proven that if the emotion centers of our brain are damaged in some way, we don't just lose the ability to laugh or cry, we lose the ability to make decisions. — Kevin Roberts

All right, yeah, sounds good, but I have no idea where they might be. Do you? Is that one of the gifts you have?" Shaylin asked.
Aphrodite- "Goddess, you are brain damaged. No, I don't have a GPS inside my head. — P.C. Cast

One more in a long line, a dreary entity among many others like him, an almost endless number of brain-damaged retards. Biological life goes on, he thought. But the soul, the mind - everything else is dead. A reflex machine. Like some insect. Repeating doomed patterns, a single pattern, over and over now. Appropriate or not. — Philip K. Dick

Eight? Was it really eight? Adrenaline or not, this was an insane time to be up. That was humanity's problem right there. They were brain damaged from the early sun. — Kim Harrison

I like the term "decedent." It's as though the man weren't dead, but merely involved in some sort of protracted legal dispute. For evident reasons, mortuary science is awash with euphemisms. "Don't say stiff, corpse, cadaver," scolds The Principles and Practice of Embalming. "Say decedent, remains or Mr. Blank. Don't say 'keep.' Say 'maintain preservation.' ... "Wrinkles are "acquired facial markings." Decomposed brain that filters down through a damaged skull and bubbles out the nose is "frothy purge. — Mary Roach

In the moments when I forgot to remind myself to remain calm, I rewarded myself with a multiversed chorus of self-denigration and blame. Weak. Inadequate. Damaged. A problem and a disappointment. The litany of criticism stuck in my brain, skipping through the same tired phrases, like an old, scratched, forty-five speed record, drumming my failure into the silence of the night, adding to my desperation and frustration. I had been singled out for the universe for a reason, and this illness was my fault. I knew that, even though saying as much out loud sounded like crazy talk. I couldn't explain why, but I felt like I deserved what I was getting. — Ginny Gilder

I am so looking forward to seeing the back of you two," Kent pipes up behind me.
"Excuse me?" I spin around to face him.
"Baby. Babe." He mimics our voices, slapping a hand against his forehead. "I swear all your mushy talk has actually irreparably damaged my brain. — Siobhan Davis

I was slightly brain damaged at birth, and I want people like me to see that they shouldn't let a disability get in the way. I want to raise awareness - I want to turn my disability into ability. — Susan Boyle

This is the hallmark of a robust biological system: political parties can perish in a tragic accident and the society will still run, sometimes with little more than a hiccup to the system. It may be that for every strange clinical case in which brain damage leads to a bizarre change in behavior or perception, there are hundreds of cases in which parts of the brain are damaged with no detectable clinical sign. — David Eagleman

Very well. Now, if you stimulate those damaged places in your brain again, you run the risk of opening up the old wounds. I mean, that if you get nerve-sensations of any kind producing the reactions which we call horror, fear, and sense of responsibility, they may go on to make disturbance right along the old channel, and produce in their turn physical changes which you will call by the names you were accustomed to associate with them - dread of German mines, responsibility for the lives of your men, strained attention and the inability to distinguish small sounds through the overpowering noise of guns." "I — Dorothy L. Sayers

Yes. You see, the whole nature, shape and even the modern blue pigment of the TARDIS is so deeply unfamiliar to the primitive mind that, although the optic nerve registers its presence, the brain cannot decode what it is seeing. The primitive visual cortex is unable to relay information about it consciously to the viewer. In effect, even though her chameleon circuit is still damaged, she's as good as invisible. She'll be just fine. — Marcus Sedgwick

When I met with Dr. Treffet in his hometown of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, he told me that these innate skills are, in his words, "factory-installed software", or "genetic" memory.
......
Why the brain suppresses these remarkable abilities is still a mystery, but sometimes, when the brain is diseased or damaged, it relents and unleashes the inner genius. — Jason Padgett

After a stroke we can re-learn how to talk, because by practicing we can establish different pathways in the brain, circumnavigating the damaged part. — Philippa Perry

The Truth Is That I Was Recognized For Stubbornness And Not Goodness. Even, Though I Was Very Intelligent And Sent To School By A Little Few Supports From Sponsors And My Mother. My Brain Was Never Ever Cool. Due To All The Mistakes I Saw From A Very Tender Age From All Those Whom I Looked Upon As Elders And Shinning Examples. Although They Where Some Good Examples Which Still Live On. Still The Early Damaged As Already Been Done. So It Led Me Dropping Out Of School In To Working And Using The Great Ancient Vedic Philosophies I Have Been Hearing From The Very Beginning Of My Conception In My Mother Womb Till The Day I Was Born And Forever. I Used Them All To Materialize Many Of My Dreams And Practice Mysticism Coupled With Spiritualism To Keep My Self Secured And Keep Cool Depending On God. — Baba Tunde Ojo-Olubiyo

Korean-American: Have you ever noticed how most Asian-Americans are slightly brain-damaged from having grown up with Asian parents? It's like being raised by monkeys - these retarded monkeys who can barely speak English and who are too evil to understand anything besides conformity and status. Most of us hate these monkeys from an early age and try to learn how to be human from school or television, but the result is always tainted by this subtle or not so subtle retardation. Asian people from Asia are even more brain-damaged, but in a different way, because they are the original monkey. — Jean Lee

It's very healthy for a young girl to be deterred from promiscuity by fear of contracting a painful, incurable disease, or cervical cancer, or sterility, or the likelihood of giving birth to a dead, blind or brain-damaged baby (even ten years later when she may be happily married). — Phyllis Schlafly

One of the most bizarre and intriguing findings is that people with brain damage may be particularly good investors. Why? Because damage to certain parts of the brain can impair the emotional responses that cause the rest of us to do foolish things. A team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, and the University of Iowa conducted an experiment that compared the investment decisions made by fifteen patients with damage to the areas of the brain that control emotions (but with intact logic and cognitive functions) to the investment decisions made by a control group. The brain-damaged investors finished the game with 13 percent more money than the control group, largely, the authors believe, because they do not experience fear and anxiety. The impaired investors took more risks when there were high potential payoffs and got less emotional when they made losses.7 This — Charles Wheelan

Dash it, they've got no heads!'
'No, but you see, Freddy, they are so very old! They have been damaged.' explained Miss Charing.
'Damaged! I should rather think so! They haven't got any arms either! Well, if this don't beat the Dutch! And just look at this, Kit!'
' Birth of Athene from the brain of Zeus,' said Kitty, consulting the catalogue.
'Birth of Athene from what? — Georgette Heyer

We all have heard a bunch of times that drinking kills brain cells, right? Right. Well, what I didn't know was that the actual sensation of brain cells being damaged is what being drunk is. So basically people are killing their brain cause it feels good. Weird, right? — L.T. Vargus

Her brain was acutely damaged in the accident.

When the doctor was coming out of the ICU, he feared.
He made an evil prayer.

"I am fine to live with her memories,
I will settle myself with the very
thought that she isn't anymore, happily and gently.

But dear God,
don't make her lose her conscious,
like a dead yet, living body.
Coldness in the eyes,
which I have seen filled with love and surprise
will kill me every day.

I don't want to die a new death every minute.
Take her away,
Or give her back in whole. — Jasleen Kaur Gumber

I do not believe that it could never be justifiable to experiment on a brain-damaged human. — Peter Singer

The left side of my brain had been shut down like a damaged section of a spinship being sealed off, airtight doors leaving the doomed compartments open to vacuum. I could still think. Control of the right side of my body soon returned. Only the language centers had been damaged beyond simple repair. The marvelous organic computer wedged in my skull had dumped its language content like a flawed program. The right hemisphere was not without some language - but only the most emotionally charged units of communication could lodge in that affective hemisphere; my vocabulary was now down to nine words. (This, I learned later, was exceptional, many victims of CVAs retain only two or three.) For the record, here is my entire vocabulary of manageable words: fuck, shit, piss, cunt, goddamn, motherfucker, asshole, peepee, and poopoo; — Dan Simmons

An animal experiment cannot be justifiable unless the experiment is so important that the use of a brain-damaged human would be justifiable. — Peter Singer

In front of her, Samuel Rain's spectacles shimmered, and she belatedly realized they weren't old-fashioned at all, but tools to allow him to see to a microcellular level. "Imbeciles." The engineer shut the interface panel, nodded at Vasic to close the protective carapace. "Stealing my work and thinking they know what to do with it. Like monkeys deciding to program a computronic system."
"Can you fix it?" Vasic asked.
"No, I'm brain damaged." With that, he put away the tool, snapped the toolbox shut, and hefted it. "Come back tomorrow."
Ivy stared after the engineer, hope a tight, hard knot in her chest. "He's either mad or brilliant."
"There's often only a razor-thin line between the two."
"And" - Rain called over his shoulder - "bring the dog! — Nalini Singh

Elizabeth is smart, ruthless, and emotionally damaged ... [i]f Elizabeth's brain was a person, it would have scars, tattoos, and be missing one eye. — Max Barry

Here then was the paradox of the President's speech. We normals - aided, doubtless, by our wish to be fooled, were indeed well and truly fooled ('Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur'). And so cunningly was deceptive word-use combined with deceptive tone, that only the brain-damaged remained intact, undeceived. — Oliver Sacks

It occurred to Cinder with a jolt that this was why she had no memories. Not because the surgeons had damaged her brain while inserting her control panel, but because she had never been awake to make memories in the first place. If — Marissa Meyer

Not to mention, we're using you for bait. (Syn)
Are you that drunk? (Nykyrian)
What? I wasn't supposed to tell her that? (Syn)
I'm bait? (Kiara)
No, you're not bait. Ignore the alcoholic whose view of reality is distorted by his brain-damaged hallucinations. (Nykyrian) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Bach-y-Rita developed a program for people with damaged facial motor nerves, who could not move their facial muscles and so couldn't close their eyes, speak properly, or express emotion, making them look like monstrous automatons. Bach-y-Rita had one of the "extra" nerves that normally goes to the tongue surgically attached to a patient's facial muscles. Then he developed a program of brain exercises to train the "tongue nerve" (and particularly the part of the brain that controls it) to act like a facial nerve. These patients learned to express normal facial emotions, speak, and close their eyes - one more instance of Bach-y-Rita's ability to "connect anything to anything. — Anonymous

Tally-When you looked around at everyone else how come you didn't notice they were brain damaged?
Az - We didn't have much to compare our fellow citizens with. Only a few colleagues who seemed different from most people, more engaged, but that was hardly a surprise.
History would indicate that the majority of people have always been sheep. Before the operation there were wars and mass hatred and clear cutting. Whatever these lesions make us, it isn't a far cry from how humanity was in the rusty era. These days we're just a bit easier to manage. — Scott Westerfeld

That was humanity's problem right there. they are brain damaged from the early sun — Kim Harrison

Disordered clumps, wrongly beautiful, like a scan of a damaged brain — J.M. Ledgard

The incredible new medical technology has made it possible for highly disciplined teams of surgeons ... to keep stricken organisms alive even if the brain is irretrievably damaged or lung and heart incapable of functioning without mechanical help. Now it is not dust to dust, but human to vegetable. — Marya Mannes

The innermost core of the patient's personality is not even touched by a psychosis.
An incurably psychotic individual may lose his usefulness but yet retain the dignity of a human being. This is my psychiatric credo.
Without it I should not think it worthwhile to be a psychiatrist.
For whose sake? Just for the sake of a damaged brain machine which cannot be repaired? If the patient were not definitely more, euthanasia would be justified. — Viktor E. Frankl

Frederick left the young couple gazing into each other's eyes. Revolting, the way otherwise sensible people could carry on, he decided. Something to do with being married, no doubt. Perhaps it damaged the brain. — Caroline Stevermer

You wouldn't shut up about how brain-damaged that 'little Rusky diva-bitch' was and how he needed to just 'get over his sorry self and give our poor cop a blow job and live happily ever after' - you remember that? — Amy Lane

You have to work to carve out your own little corner, and I'm certainly smacking my head against the wall trying to make a dent. I just hope I don't get brain-damaged before I get there — Rose McGowan

In short, the brain has the power to recruit healthy neurons to perform the function of the damaged ones. Neuroplasticity enables the brain to reassign jobs. — Richard J. Davidson

It was always hard work to push through a crowed of reporters with the scent of blood in their nostrils. You might not think so, since on camera they appear to be brain-damaged wimps with severe eating disorders. But put them at a police barricade and a miraculous thing happens ... The strength comes from some mysterious place-and somehow, when there is gore on the ground, these anorexic creatures can push their way through anything. Without mussing their hair, too. — Jeff Lindsay

After I began to make some money, my brain-damaged accountant put me in one business after another that went bad. The only one that panned out was a small bank, an old Scottish firm with London offices in Pall Mall. I was a director. We sold out to a larger bank. That was the only successful venture I've had, apart from acting. — Sean Connery

If you inhale a millionth of a gram of plutonium, the surrounding cells receive a very, very high dose. Most die within that area, because it's an alpha emitter. The cells on the periphery remain viable. They mutate, and the regulatory genes are damaged. Years later, that person develops cancer. Now, that's true for radioactive iodine, that goes to the thyroid; cesium-137, that goes to the brain and muscles; strontium-90 goes to bone, causing bone cancer and leukemia. — Helen Caldicott

The gamelan created in the listener a brain wave beyond all alphas and betas and thetas, a brain wave that paralyzed the normal channels of thought and forced new ones to grow outside them, in the untouched regions of the mind, like parallel blood vessels that form to accommodate a damaged heart. — Janet Fitch

She felt stupid, though she knew she wasn't. She was intelligent, had always been an A student and an overachiever. The fact that her short-term memory came and went didn't make her less intelligent. It just made her feel that way - which made her think other people would feel the same way about her. They would think of her as brain-damaged. — Tami Hoag

I damaged all the complicated bits of the brain to do with processing and emotional control. I was prey to every single emotion that swept over me and I couldn't deal with it. I had to re-learn things from scratch. — Richard Hammond

Phew am exhausted. Just read about something called "the offside rule". Too much for my tiny brain. Must be damaged from nail polish fumes — Kelly Cates

Although I am not stupid, the mathematical side of my brain is like dumb notes upon a damaged piano. — Margot Asquith

Almost everyone today is brain-damaged by our education which is designed to produce docile automatons. — Timothy Leary

Of course I can do this. I'm pregnant, not brain-damaged. My condition doesn't change my personality. — Christine Feehan

In the history of the nation, there has never been a political party so ridiculous as today's Democrats. It's as if all the brain-damaged people in America got together and formed a voting bloc. — Ann Coulter

I remember when people used to think I was smart.
I remember when people used to think my brain was useful.
Damaged by water, sure. And ready to seizure at any moment. But still useful, and maybe even a little bit beautiful and sacred and magical. — Sherman Alexie

It is because of this notion [of species essence] that we demand that a severely brain-damaged person should have the same rights as a university professor, or a physically disabled person the same rights as an Olympian sportsman. They are all 'human', whatever their intellectual and physical abilities. — Steven Mithen

I think managers have realized that most software people are slightly brain damaged, that they're off on their own planets. — Eugene Jarvis

She sat down on the stool next to Syn. "Out of curiosity, why are you keeping me here?" It was against military protocol. In the past, whenever her father had "protected" her, she'd been moved to a safe location.
Nykyrian took a drink of his juice before he answered. "When you're being hunted to the extent you are, there's no real safe place. You're famous, which makes it all the harder to hide you. Better to keep you here where you have the advantage of knowing the terrain and are most comfortable."
"Not to mention, we're using you for bait."
Nykyrian cocked his head at Syn. "Are you that/I> drunk?"
Syn's eyes widedened. "What? I wasn't supposed to tell her that?"
Kiara was horrified. "I'm bait?"
"No, you're not bait. Ignore the alcoholic whose view of reality is distorted by his brain-damaged hallucinations."
-Kiara, Nykyrian, & Syn — Sherrilyn Kenyon

To what extent is someone at fault if his brain is damaged in ways about which he has no choice? After all, we are not independent of our biology, right? — David Eagleman

With God's help, I've not had a drink in nine and a half years. That's my whole story right there. And because of that, I'm doing this. I'm making records, I'm touring. I was so involved in just getting brain damaged, I wasn't doing anything. I had great ideas, many notebooks filled with notes, some of them I can read and some of them I just can't read, but I really didn't do anything constructive, it was all just good ideas. Now I'm trying to lead a constructive life a day at a time. — Ringo Starr

She stopped shrieking after a moment. It wasn't the crazy looks she drew from the other pedestrians that made her stop. And her damaged sanity hadn't managed to repair itself. She'd left something behind in that apartment. Something she'd always taken for granted. Faith in a rational world. It was like a tiny cog had been removed from her brain, and all the gears were still working, but a slight wobble was slowly and inevitably stripping the teeth until one day, without warning the Rube Goldberg device that was her mind would fall apart with a loud SPROING. — A. Lee Martinez

Domestic pain can be searing, and it is usually what does us in. It's almost indigestible: death, divorce, old age, drugs; brain-damaged children, violence, senility, unfaithfulness. Good luck with figuring it out. It unfolds, and you experience it, and it is so horrible and endless that you could almost give up a dozen times. But grace can be the experience of a second wind, when even though what you want is clarity and resolution, what you get is stamina and poignancy and the strength to hang on. Through the most ordinary things, books, for instance, or a postcard, or eyes or hands, life is transformed. Hands that for decades reached out to hurt us, to drag us down, to control us, or to wave us away in dismissal now reach for us differently. They become instruments of tenderness, buoyancy, exploration, hope. — Anne Lamott