Charles Sherrington Quotes & Sayings

The brain is a mystery; it has been and still will be. How does the brain produce thoughts? That is the central question and we have still no answer to it. — Charles Scott Sherrington

In some units it may suppress the motor discharge altogether, in some it may merely slow the motor discharge thus lessening the wave frequency of the contraction and so the tension. — Charles Scott Sherrington

If it is mind that we are searching the brain, then we are supposing the brain to be much more than a telephone-exchange. We are supposing it to be a telephone-exchange along with subscribers as well. — Charles Scott Sherrington

The brain seems a thoroughfare for nerve-action passing its way to the motor animal. It has been remarked that Life's aim is an act not a thought. To-day the dictum must be modified to admit that, often, to refrain from an act is no less an act than to commit one, because inhibition is coequally with excitation a nervous activity. — Charles Scott Sherrington

Natural knowledge has not forgone emotion. It has simply taken for itself new ground of emotion, under impulsion from and in sacrifice to that one of its 'values', Truth. — Charles Scott Sherrington

As followers of natural science we know nothing of any relation between thoughts and the brain, except as a gross correlation in time and space. — Charles Scott Sherrington

Each waking day is a stage dominated for good or ill, comedy, farce, or tragedy, by a dramatis personae, the 'self', and so it will be until the curtain drops. — Charles Scott Sherrington

That our being should consist of two fundamental elements [physical and psychical] offers I suppose no greater inherent improbability than that it should rest on one only. — Charles Scott Sherrington

If we denote excitation as an end-effect by the sign plus (+), and inhibition as end-effect by the sign minus (-), such a reflex as the scratch-reflex can be termed a reflex of double-sign, for it develops excitatory end-effect and then inhibitory end-effect even during the duration of the exciting stimulus. — Charles Scott Sherrington

With the nervous system intact the reactions of the various parts of that system, the 'simple reflexes', are ever combined into great unitary harmonies, actions which in their sequence one upon another constitute in their continuity what may be termed the 'behaviour'. — Charles Scott Sherrington

The terminal path may, to distinguish it from internuncial common paths, be called the final common path. The motor nerve to a muscle is a collection of such final common paths. — Charles Scott Sherrington

Charles Sherrington, the founder of modern neurophysiology, contended in 1947 that brain processes alone cannot account for the full range of subjective mental phenomena, including conscious free will. "That our being should consist of two fundamental elements offers, I suppose, no greater inherent improbability than that it should rest on one only," he wrote. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

This integrative action in virtue of which the nervous system unifies from separate organs an animal possessing solidarity, an individual, is the problem before us. — Charles Scott Sherrington

A rainbow every morning who would pause
to look at? The wonderful which comes often or is plentifully about us is soon taken for granted. Th at is practical enough. It allows us to get on with life. But it may stultify if it
cannot on occasion be thrown off . To recapture now and then childhood's wonder, is to secure a driving force
for occasional grown-up thoughts. — Charles Scott Sherrington

Further study of central nervous action, however, finds central inhibition too extensive and ubiquitous to make it likely that it is confined solely to the taxis of antagonistic muscles. — Charles Scott Sherrington

He solved at a stroke the great question of the direction of nerve-currents in their travel through brain and spinal cord. — Charles Scott Sherrington

Existence of an excited state is not a prerequisite for the production of inhibition; inhibition can exist apart from excitation no less than, when called forth against an excitation already in progress, it can suppress or moderate it. — Charles Scott Sherrington

Swiftly the brain becomes an enchanted loom, where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern-always a meaningful pattern-though never an abiding one. — Charles Scott Sherrington

That a strong stimulus to such an afferent nerve, exciting most or all of its fibres, should in regard to a given muscle develop inhibition and excitation concurrently is not surprising. — Charles Scott Sherrington