Societies would _not_ be better off if everyone were like Mr Spock, all rationality and no emotion. Instead, a balance - a teaming up of the internal rivals - is optimal for brains. ... Some balance of the emotional and rational systems is needed, and that balance may already be optimized by natural selection in human brains.

— David Eagleman

So why does the world appear stable to you when you’re looking at it? Why doesn’t it appear as jerky and nauseating as the poorly filmed video? Here’s why: your internal model operates under the assumption that the world outside is stable. Your eyes are not like video cameras – they simply venture out to find more details to feed into the internal model. They’re not like camera lenses that you’re seeing through; they’re gathering bits of data to feed the world inside your skull." The Brain: The Story of You - David Eagle man

— David Eagleman

That afternoon She listened to the grievances of the dead from two warring nations. Both sides had suffered, both sides had legitimate grievances, both pled their cases earnestly. She covered Her ears and moaned in misery. She knew Her humans were multidimensional, and She could no longer live under the rigid architecture of Her youthful choices.

— David Eagleman

The deep secret of the brain is that not only the spinal cord but the entire central nervous system works this way: internally generated activity is modulated by sensory input. In this view, the difference between being awake and being asleep is merely that the data coming in from the eyes anchors the perception. Asleep vision (dreaming) is perception that is not tied down to anything in the real world; waking perception is something like dreaming with a little more commitment to what's in front of you. Other examples of unanchored perception are found in prisoners in pitch-park solitary confinement, or in people in sensory deprivation chambers. Both of these situations quickly lead to hallucinations.

— David Eagleman

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.

— David Eagleman

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

— David Eagleman

There's someone in my head, but it's not me." Pink Floyd David Eagle man

— David Eagleman

We are not at the center of ourselves, but instead — like the Earth in the Milky Way, and the Milky Way in the universe — far out on a distant edge, hearing little of what is transpiring.

— David Eagleman

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

— David Eagleman

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 electromagnetic 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.

— David Eagleman