A Quote by John Updike

Books externalise our brains and turn our homes into thinking bodies.

John Updike

Quote Topics

Bodies Books Brains Homes Our Thinking Turn

Quote Author

John Updike
American - Novelist
March 18, 1932 - January 27, 2009

Presumably there are energies, to which each human is sensitive, that we cannot yet detect by means of our instruments. Built into our brains and our bodies are very sensitive tuneable receivers for energies that we do not yet know about in our science but that each one of us can detect under the proper circumstances and the proper state of mind. We can tune our nervous systems and bodies to receive these energies. We can also tune our brains and bodies to transmit these energies.

John C. Lilly

Recognize that the great majority of us aren't trained actors and entertainers. Usually, it's not our faces, our bodies, our personas or our stage presence that sells our books. It's our stories, our visions and our voices.

M. J. Rose

Ninety percent of our lives is governed by emotion. Our brains merely register and act upon what is telegraphed to them by our bodily experience. Intellect is to emotion as our clothes are to our bodies; we could not very well have civilized life without clothes, but we would be in a poor way if we had only clothes without bodies.

Alfred North Whitehead

I think the neural pathways in our brains affect what happens in our bodies, and so can alter our health.

Amy Hardie

We can imagine our bodies being destroyed, our brains ceasing to function, our bones turning to dust, but it is harder - some would say impossible - to imagine the end of our very existence.

Paul Bloom

Like our physical bodies, our memory becomes out of shape. As children, we are constantly learning new experiences, but by the time we reach our 20s, we start to lead a more sedentary life both mentally and physically. Our lives become routine, and we stop challenging our brains, and our memory starts to suffer.

Tony Buzan

Just as our bodies need to be exercised, so, perhaps, do our brains.

Sheila Hancock

When passion turns to paralysis, when our bodies stop listening to our brains, when a fatal disease sucks our insides out, will we then decide that death may well be an act of kindness?

Barkha Dutt

It turns out that the very genes that turn on in cancer cells perform vital functions in normal cells. In other words, the very genes that allow our embryos to grow or our brains to grow, our bodies to grow, if you mutate them, if you distort them, then you unleash cancer.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

In our house we repeated the pattern of thousands of other homes. There were a few books and a lot of music. Our food and our furniture were no different from our neighbors'.

Emanuel Celler

Checklists turn out...to be among the basic tools of the quality and productivity revolution in aviation, engineering, construction - in virtually every field combining high risk and complexity. Checklists seem lowly and simplistic, but they help fill in for the gaps in our brains and between our brains.

Atul Gawande

I’m imagining that paper books will evolve to become something akin to candles - we have them in our homes and cherish their light, but don’t light our homes with them. Readers of Lincoln’s era would likely be surprised at how well-lit our homes are, and I think it’s likely that we will be surprised at how well-read future book readers will be.

Steve Leveen

The primary implication is that we're going to combine our intelligence with computers. We're going to make ourselves smarter. By the 2030s, they will literally go inside our bodies and inside our brains.

Judy Woodruff

We used our brains to create and program them, and now we have to continue to use our brains to prevent computers from taking over our lives.

Lorne Greene

[The Lord] has indicated that the greatest work we parents can do is performed in our homes, and our homes can be heaven, particularly when our marriages are sealed in the house of God.

Thomas S. Monson

We are our brains. My brain is talking to your brain; our bodies are hanging along for the ride.

Jeff Hawkins

A Quote by John Updike

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors