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Science tells us we are merely beasts, but we don't feel like that. We feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, forever craving transcendence.

— Vilayanur S. Ramachandran The Tell-Tale Brain (2010)

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More quotes by Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

Your "conscious life" is an elaborate after-the-fact rationalization of things you really do for other reasons.

The Tell-Tale Brain (2010)

What neurology tells us is that the self consists of many components, and the notion of one unitary self may well be an illusion.

The Tell-Tale Brain (2010)

Any ape can reach for a banana, but only a human can reach for the stars or even know what that means.

VS Ramachandran: The Sherlock Holmes Of Neuroscience (2017)

Whether a country is to be called 'civilised' or not, depends not on how affluent the upper 10 per cent are, but how well they treat the lower 10 per cent.

VS Ramachandran: The Sherlock Holmes Of Neuroscience (2017)

Here is this mass of jelly - three pound mass of jelly - that you can hold in the palm of your hand, and it can contemplate the vastness of interstellar space, it can contemplate the meaning of infinity, and it can contemplate itself contemplating the meaning of infinity.

All Vilayanur S. Ramachandran quotes →

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All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

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To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Vilayanur S. Ramachandran (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.