We open our eyes and we think we're seeing the whole world out there. But what has become clear— and really just in the last few centuries— is that when you look at the electro-magnetic spectrum we are seeing less than 1/10 Billionth of the information that's riding on there. So we call that visible light. But everything else passing through our bodies is completely invisible to us.Even though we accept the reality that's presented to us, we're really only seeing a little window of what's happening.

Read quote

.. we are not conscious of most things until we ask ourselves questions about them

Read quote

There is a looming chasm between what your brain knows and what your mind is capable of accessing.

Read quote

Although we credit God with designing man, it turns out He's not sufficiently skilled to have done so. In point of fact, He unintentionally knocked over the first domino by creating a palette of atoms with different shapes. Electron clouds bonded, molecules bloomed, proteins embraced, and eventually cells formed and learned how to hang on to one another like lovebirds. He discovered that by simmering the Earth at the proper distance from the Sun, it instinctively sprouted with life. He's not so much a creator as a molecule tinkerer who enjoyed a stroke of luck: He simply set the ball rolling by creating a smorgasbord of matter, and creation ensued.

Read quote

Imagine for a moment that we are nothing but the product of billions of years of molecules coming together and ratcheting up through natural selection, that we are composed only of highways of fluids and chemicals sliding along roadways within billions of dancing cells, that trillions of synaptic conversations hum in parallel, that this vast egglike fabric of micron-thin circuitry runs algorithms undreamt of in modern science, and that these neural programs give rise to our decision making, loves, desires, fears, and aspirations. To me, that understanding would be a numinous experience, better than anything ever proposed in anyone's holy text.

Read quote

Death... The moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.

Read quote

All creation necessarily ends in this: Creators, powerless, fleeing from the things they have wrought.

Read quote

Since we live in the heads of those who remember us, we lose control of our lives and become who they want us to be.

Read quote

Among all the creatures of creation, the gods favor us: We are the only ones who can empathize with their problems.

Read quote

It is only through us that God lives. When we abandon him, he dies.

Read quote

There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.

Read quote

Imagine for a moment that we are nothing but the product of billions of years of molecules coming together and ratcheting up through natural selection, that we are composed only of highways of fluids and chemicals sliding along roadways within billions of dancing cells, that trillions of synaptic conversations hum in parallel, that this vast egglike fabric of micron-thin circuitry runs algorithms undreamt of in modern science, and that these neural programs give rise to our decision making, loves, desires, fears, and aspirations. To me, that understanding would be a numinous experience, better than anything ever proposed in anyone's holy text.

Read quote

All creation necessarily ends in this: Creators, powerless, fleeing from the things they have wrought.

Read quote

Since we live in the heads of those who remember us, we lose control of our lives and become who they want us to be.

Read quote

It is only through us that God lives. When we abandon him, he dies.

Read quote

We open our eyes and we think we're seeing the whole world out there. But what has become clear— and really just in the last few centuries— is that when you look at the electro-magnetic spectrum we are seeing less than 1/10 Billionth of the information that's riding on there. So we call that visible light. But everything else passing through our bodies is completely invisible to us.Even though we accept the reality that's presented to us, we're really only seeing a little window of what's happening.

Read quote

Death... The moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.

Read quote

Although we credit God with designing man, it turns out He's not sufficiently skilled to have done so. In point of fact, He unintentionally knocked over the first domino by creating a palette of atoms with different shapes. Electron clouds bonded, molecules bloomed, proteins embraced, and eventually cells formed and learned how to hang on to one another like lovebirds. He discovered that by simmering the Earth at the proper distance from the Sun, it instinctively sprouted with life. He's not so much a creator as a molecule tinkerer who enjoyed a stroke of luck: He simply set the ball rolling by creating a smorgasbord of matter, and creation ensued.

Read quote

There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.

Read quote

Among all the creatures of creation, the gods favor us: We are the only ones who can empathize with their problems.

Read quote

David Eagleman

Books by David Eagleman

Quotes by David Eagleman