Because we do not understand the brain very well we are constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a read more

Because we do not understand the brain very well we are constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it. In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard. ('What else could it be?') I was amused to see that Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought that the brain worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electro-magnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill, and I am told some of the ancient Greeks thought the brain functions like a catapult. At present, obviously, the metaphor is the digital computer.

Happy is he who bears a god within.

Happy is he who bears a god within.

We have no assurance that half-truth will make us free.

We have no assurance that half-truth will make us free.

Everything that we think God has in his mind necessarily proceeds from our own mind; it is what we imagine read more

Everything that we think God has in his mind necessarily proceeds from our own mind; it is what we imagine to be in God's mind, and it is really difficult for human intelligence to guess at a divine intelligence. What we usually end up with by this sort of reasoning is to make God the color-sergeant of our army and to make Him as chauvinistic as ourselves.

I do not understand the capricious lewdness of the sleeping mind.

I do not understand the capricious lewdness of the sleeping mind.

Collective judgement of new ideas is so often wrong that it is arguable that progress depends on individuals being free read more

Collective judgement of new ideas is so often wrong that it is arguable that progress depends on individuals being free to back their own judgement despite collective disapproval.

Sin makes its own hell, and goodness its own heaven.

Sin makes its own hell, and goodness its own heaven.

Psychoanalysis is the mental illness it purports to cure.

Psychoanalysis is the mental illness it purports to cure.

If you hate something thoroughly without knowing why, you can be sure there is something of it in your own read more

If you hate something thoroughly without knowing why, you can be sure there is something of it in your own nature.