Date: November 14, 2010

"When we evolved the capacity to be disgusted by moral failures, we didn’t evolve a new brain region to handle it. Instead, the insula expanded its portfolio."

— Sapolsky, Robert (b. 1957)

Date: November 14, 2010

"What are the consequences of the fact that evolution is a tinkerer and not an inventor, and has duct-taped metaphors and symbols to whichever pre-existing brain areas provided the closest fit?"

— Sapolsky, Robert (b. 1957)

Date: March 24, 2011

"It is like finding that cheese depends on chalk--that soul depends on matter."

— McGinn, Colin (b. 1950)

Date: March 24, 2011

"It [neurology] has all the fascination of a horror story--the Jekyll of the mind bound for life to the Hyde of the brain."

— McGinn, Colin (b. 1950)

Date: September 2, 2011

"When we fight an urge, it feels like a strenuous effort, as if there were a homunculus in the head that physically impinged on a persistent antagonist."

— Pinker, Steven (b. 1954)

Date: September 2, 2011

"We speak of exerting will power, of forcing ourselves to go to work, of restraining ourselves and of controlling our temper, as if it were an unruly dog."

— Pinker, Steven (b. 1954)

Date: September 2, 2011

"The 'will' in willpower is not some mysterious 'free will,' a ghost in the machine that can do as it pleases, but a part of the machine itself."

— Pinker, Steven (b. 1954)

Date: September 2, 2011

"The disasters reveal a limitation of the muscle metaphor: certain evolutionarily prepared drives seem to withstand even the most bulked-up powers of will."

— Pinker, Steven (b. 1954)

Date: April 18, 2016

"We begin to esteem this way of being at its true worth when we realize that the creators of the brain food that we're wolfing down are at least as involved in it, at the level of imagination, as we are."

— James, Clive (b. 1939)

Date: April 18, 2016

"A TV habit on this scale starts to permeate every corner of your mind."

— James, Clive (b. 1939)