Robert E. Ornstein Quotes

The greatest surprise of human evolution may be that the highest form of selfishness is selflessness.

We have to shift our understanding of ourselves as separate individuals, each seeking our own welfare, to an understanding of how we fit into social, biological, and physical environments.

When the 'weaker' of the two brains (right and left) is stimulated and encouraged to work in cooperation with the stronger side, the end result is a great increase in overall ability and ... often five to ten times more effectiveness.

If you spend too much time being like everybody else, you decrease your chances of coming up with something different.

This duality has been reflected in classical as well as modern literature as reason versus passion, or mind versus intuition. The split between the conscious mind and the unconscious. There are moments in each of our lives when our verbal-intellect suggests one course, and our hearts, or intuition, another.

New research shows that emotions have a separate system of nerve pathways, through the limbic system to the cortex, allowing emotional signals to avoid conscious control.

Human inventiveness is overwhelming human adaptiveness. Our ability to judge lags behind our ability to create.

To keep your resolve, surround yourself with those who want you to succeed. The brain cannot do its job of protecting the body without contact with other people.

Unconscious decisions for action go on constantly inside the head.

We're worse off than Freud thought, because many actions proceed without our knowing anything about them.

Society would not tolerate legislation declaring that the theory that the sun circles the earth be given equal time with the theory of a heliocentric solar system; it should not pay attention to the equally preposterous notions of scientific creationism