A Quote by Seth Shostak

Our brains are wired to interpret shapes as faces and bodies. That's why people see the Virgin Mary in the clouds or even in cheese sandwiches. It's your cytoplasm, not some strange ectoplasm.

Seth Shostak

Quote Topics

Bodies Brains Cheese Cheese Sandwiches Clouds Even Faces Interpret Mary Our People Sandwiches See Shapes Some Strange Virgin Mary Why Wired Your

Quote Author

Seth Shostak
American - Scientist

People are wired for lots of things. We're wired for novelty. We're wired for humor. We're wired for new pieces of information that surprise us in some way or add value to our lives. We're wired for fear.

Ramez Naam

Everyone prefers some foods over others, but some adults take this tendency to an extreme. These people tend to prefer the kinds of bland food they may have enjoyed as children - such as plain or buttered pasta, macaroni and cheese, cheese pizza, French fries and grilled cheese sandwiches - and to restrict their eating to just a few dishes.

Andrew Weil

Our visual cortexes are wired to quickly recognize faces and then quickly subtract massive amounts of detail from them, zeroing in on their essential message: Is this person happy? Angry? Fearful? Individual faces may vary greatly, but a smirk on one is a lot like a smirk on another. Smirks are conceptual, not pictorial. Our brains are like cartoonists - and cartoonists are like our brains, simplifying and exaggerating, subordinating facial detail to abstract comic concepts.

Jonathan Franzen

If you see voters as rational, you'll be a terrible politician. People are not wired to be rational. Our brains simply evolved to keep us alive. Brains did not evolve to give us truth. Brains merely give us movies in our minds that keeps us sane and motivated. But none of it is rational or true, except maybe sometimes by coincidence.

Scott Adams

Call me All-American, but I love Ham and Cheese sandwiches. And not just any old ham and cheese sandwich... My mother's is the best. I've tried many times to make these sandwiches on my own, but it's never the same.

Andy Roddick

Even if I believed there was a real Jesus, I wouldn't fall for that line of hogwash. The "Virgin" Mary should get a posthumous medal for telling the biggest goddamn lie that was ever told. Anybody who believes that will believe that the moon is made out of green cheese.

Madalyn Murray O'Hair

I had played the Virgin Mary in 'Jesus of Nazareth,' and I had done 'Juliet' at the age of 15. People said, 'Where do you go from playing Juliet and the Virgin Mary?' And I said, 'Mother Teresa of Calcutta.'

Olivia Hussey

Exploration is wired into our brains. If we can see the horizon, we want to know what's beyond.

Buzz Aldrin

I hate that our brains are wired that way. You don't remember the people that raved about us or just said something nice - I don't know why that's not in us to focus on *that*. But I think it takes a conscious effort to train our minds to change that.

Khloe Kardashian

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

The nativity mystery “conceived from the Holy Spirit and born from the Virgin Mary”, means, that God became human, truly human out of his own grace. The miracle of the existence of Jesus , his “climbing down of God” is: Holy Spirit and Virgin Mary! Here is a human being, the Virgin Mary, and as he comes from God, Jesus comes also from this human being. Born of the Virgin Mary means a human origin for God. Jesus Christ is not only truly God, he is human like every one of us. He is human without limitation. He is not only similar to us, he is like us.

Karl Barth

There's great poetry in the Old Testament and the New Testament. And I'm not interested in trying to prove whether this paragraph is as it was or as it should have been or should not be. My pursuit is to find the truth for me in those stories and make them apropos. The important thing is that people wrote them. These were inspirational stories, and you got to see them that way. If you don't, you'll get in trouble. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time trying to find out whether or not Mary was a virgin. What do I care about Mary being a virgin?

Cecil Williams

I got brown sandwiches and green sandwiches. Its either very new cheese or very old meat. - Oscar Madison, from The Odd Couple

Neil Simon

Your smile brightens the lives of all who see it. To someone who has seen a dozen people frown, scowl or turn their faces away, your smile is like the sun breaking through the clouds.

Dale Carnegie

Our eyes and brains pretty consistently like some human forms better than others. Shown photos of strangers, even babies look longer at the faces adults rank the best-looking.