Dehaene Quotes & Sayings

I do not mean, of course, that we can always accurately express our conscious thoughts with Proustian accuracy. Consciousness overflows language: we perceive vastly more than we can describe. — Stanislas Dehaene

Dehaene even allows himself a few moments of (justifiable) annoyance at the way that "childhood reading experts" continue their debates about the best strategies for teaching reading to children in complete ignorance of a large and growing body of work on how the human brain processes written language. — Alan Jacobs

It is best not to have been born at all: but, if born, as quickly as possible to return whence one came. — Sophocles

Reading is listening to the dead with our eyes. (page 325, Reading in the Brain, Stanislas Dehaene, 2009) — Francisco De Quevedo

The theory that everyone acts from self-interest, direct or indirect, is psychologically unsound ... Throughout history ... there have been millions of men and women with some sort of Humanist philosophy who have consciously given up their lives for a social ideal. — Corliss Lamont

It is not clear who will bring to the Whitehouse those useful commodities of vivid language, a sense of history and most important - a sense of humour, but Johnson himself will provide many other attributes. He is effective precisely because he is so determined, industrious, personal and even humourless, particularly in dealing with Congress. ( ... ) Kennedy had a detached and even donnish willingness to grant a merit in the other fellow's argument. Johnson is not so inclined to retreat and grants nothing in an argument, not even equal time. Ask not what you have done for Lyndon Johnson, but what you have done for him lately. This may not be the most attractive quality of the new administration but it works. The lovers of style are not too happy with the new administration, but the lovers of substance are not complaining. — Robert A. Caro

All dreams can be a source of light...but some are especially radiant. They linger and continue to shine with all they have to reveal. — Carolyn Coman

(Years of work are required before the cerebral mechanisms for reading, if regularly oiled, finally become unconscious.-Stanislas Dehaene.) The important thing is not so much to read fast, as to read each book at the speed it deserves. It is as regrettable to spend too much time on some books as it to read others too quickly. There are books you know well, just from flicking through them, others you only grasp at second or third reading, and others again will will last you a lifetime. — Jacques Bonnet

[Life] is a dance, and when you are dancing, you are not intent on getting somewhere. The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance. — Oliver Burkeman

Introspection makes our conscious motives and strategies transparent to us, while we have no sure means of deciphering them in others. Yet we never genuinely know our true selves. We remain largely ignorant of the actual unconscious determinants of our behavior, and therefore we cannot accurately predict what our behavior will be in circumstances beyond the safety zone of our past experience. The Greek motto "Know thyself," when applied to the minute details of our behavior, remains an inaccessible ideal. Our "self" is just a database that gets filled in through our social experiences, in the same format with which we attempt to understand other minds, and therefore it is just as likely to include glaring gaps, misunderstandings, and delusions. — Stanislas Dehaene

Science often progresses by carving out new distinctions that refine the fuzzy categories of natural language. — Stanislas Dehaene

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination - stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one - million - year - old light. A vast pattern - of which I am a part ... What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent? — Richard Feynman

The warrior who goes off to battle should not boast as the one who returns from it. — Richard Paul Evans