Date: 1968

"We might thus consider expanding the population in one's head to include subordinate little men who superintend the execution of the 'elementary' behaviors involved in complex sequences like grasping a shoelace."

— Fodor, Jerry (b. 1935)

Date: 1968

"The shop foreman [in one's head] goes about supervising that activity in a way that is, in essence, a microcosm of supervising tying one's shoe. Indeed the shop foreman might be imagined to superintend a detail of wage slaves, whose functions include: searching inputs for traces of shoelace, fle...

— Fodor, Jerry (b. 1935)

Date: 1968

"Rather the little man stands as a representative pro tem for psychological faculties which mediate the integration of shoe-tying behavior by applying information about how shoes are tied."

— Fodor, Jerry (b. 1935)

Date: 1968

"This is, I think, perfectly correct. The little man [in one's head], as we might say, has in his library pamphlets entitled 'Tying One's Shoes', 'Speaking Latin', and 'Typing 'Afghanistan"', but no pamphlet entitled 'Being Intelligent' or 'Speaking Latin Fluently' or 'Typing "Afghanistan" with P...

— Fodor, Jerry (b. 1935)

Date: 1979

"There's a party in my mind...And it never stops / There's a party up there all the time."

— Byrne, David (b. 1952) and Jerry Harrison (b. 1949) [Talking Heads]

Date: 1984

"Like, I own your brain and what you know, but your thoughts have Swiss citizenship."

— Gibson, William (b. 1948)

Date: 1994

"Because you are traveling right along with him as he forms his sentences, making each word he says appear as a little clump of letters on your screen, you begin to feel as if you are doing the thinking yourself; you occupy some dark space in the interior of his mind as he goes about his job."

— Baker, Nicholson (b. 1957)

Date: 1997

"What caretaker, what Verger of the Temple of the Self...?"

— Pynchon, Thomas (b. 1937)

Date: 1999

"There was always a subject, a "transcendental ego," applying the rules, which simply postponed a scientific theory of behavior by installing a little man (homunculus) in the mind to guide its actions."

— Dreyfus, Hubert L. (b. 1929)

Date: 2001

"And in between these partings and reunions, like lovers, mind and body dream of what they might do together."

— Richardson, James (b. 1950)