Researcher Quotes

You're imperfect, and you're wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging. The power of vulnerability.

We are like a judge confronted by a defendant who declines to answer, and we must determine the truth from the circumstantial evidence.

All experience is a drug experience. Whether it's mediated by our own [endogenous] drugs, or whether it's mediated by substances that we ingest that are found in plants, cognition, consciousness, the working of the brain, it's all a chemically mediated process. Life itself is a drug experience.

It is a strange fact, characteristic of the incomplete state of our current knowledge, that totally opposite conclusions are drawn about prehistoric conditions on Earth, depending on whether the problem is approached from the biological or the geophysical viewpoint.

Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.

A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people.

We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don't function as we were meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick.

Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.

When the brain is whole, the unified consciousness of the left and right hemispheres adds up to more than the individual properties of the separate hemispheres.

A Rolex watch or an expensive car are the things guys often use to show status, wealth, and basic desirability.

Well, I have my own article on where the heck is global warming?.

..The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't.

Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change.

If children are apparently unable to learn, we should assume that we have not as yet found the right way to teach them.

As the child approaches a new text he is entitled to an introduction so that when he reads, the gist of the... story can provide some guide for a fluent reading.

Courage is telling our story, not being immune to criticism.

I get frustrated with people who say that a drug experience can have no spiritual validity. I'm here to tell you that all experience is a drug experience. We're all on drugs all the time, largely because we are MADE of drugs

Keep an open heart. We are wired to find love.

Alfred Nobel was much concerned, as are we all, with the tangible benefits we hope for and expect from physiological and medical research, and the Faculty of the Caroline Institute has ever been alert to recognize practical benefits.

Derek Bok's most recent book, Our Underachieving Colleges, is worth scrutinizing. . . . Bok is . . . on solid ground in pointing out that our colleges underachieve in preparing students for citizenship.

Why do we feel jealousy? Therapists often regard the demon as a scar of childhood trauma or a symptom of a psychological problem. And it's true that people who feel inadequate, insecure, or overly dependent tend to be more jealous than others.

Nobel prize-calibre geniuses often have certain core autistic features at their heart.

Neuroscience is by far the most exciting branch of science because the brain is the most fascinating object in the universe. Every human brain is different - the brain makes each human unique and defines who he or she is.

Exposure to some pesticides during infancy, even at very low levels, can lead to serious life-long consequences if the pesticides disrupt hormone-driven developmental processes.

I think we should put the same weight now on the co-factors as we have on HIV.

There are no causes of poverty. To ask what causes poverty is like asking what causes coldit is the absence of energy. Similarly poverty is the absence of wealth. We should ask, ‘what are the causes of wealth?’

Before brains there was no color or sound in the universe, nor was there any flavor or aroma and probably little sense and no feeling or emotion.

A world without love is a deadly place.

A scientist who is also a human being cannot rest while knowledge which might be used to reduce suffering rests on the shelf.

Climate change is for real. We have just a small window of opportunity and it is closing rather rapidly. There is not a moment to lose.

What is needed to break the vicious spiral is a world-wide change in attitudes, values, and social policy. As Einstein put it, "We need a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive."

Without animal research, polio would still be claiming thousands of lives each year.

Nobody can have your psychedelic experience for you;

you just have to screw your courage up and raise the cup to your lips or smoke the pipe or whatever it is and face what's in there.

You fall in love with somebody who fits within what I call your 'love map,' an unconscious list of traits that you build in childhood as you grow up. And I also think that you gravitate to certain people, actually, with somewhat complementary brain systems.

What it comes down to is that modern society discriminates against the right hemisphere.

When you get to a place where you understand that love and belonging, your worthiness, is a birthright and not something you have to earn, anything is possible.

Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves, even when we risk disappointing others.

That "ol' black magic" is a fickle force.

The chemistry of romantic love can trigger the chemistry of sexual desire and the fuel of sexual desire can trigger the fuel of romance. This is why it is dangerous to copulate with someone with whom you don't wish to become involved. Although you intend to have casual sex, you might just fall in love.

Vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage.

There's magic to love... Millions of years ago we evolved three basic drives: the sex love, romantic love, and attachment to a long-term partner. These circuits are deeply embedded in the human brian. They're going to survive as long as our species survive on what Shakespeare called, this "mortal coil."

One must acknowledge with cryptography no amount of violence will ever solve a math problem.

There's all kinds of reasons that you fall in love with one person rather than another: Timing is important. Proximity is important. Mystery is important. You fall in love with somebody who's somewhat mysterious, in part because mystery elevates dopamine in the brain, probably pushes you over that threshold to fall in love.

If you put shame in a Petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence and judgment.

Shame is the most powerful, master emotion. It's the fear that we're not good enough.

Your sweetheart calls you by another's name.

His eyes linger too long on your best friend. He talks with excitement about a girl at work. And the fire catches. Jealousy - that sickening combination of possessiveness, suspicion, rage, and humiliation - can overtake your mind and threaten your very core as you contemplate your rival.

My own experience of over 60 years in biomedical research amply demonstrated that without the use of animals and of human beings, it would have been impossible to acquire the important knowledge needed to prevent much suffering and premature death not only among humans but also among [other] animals.

Ayahuasca is a symbiotic ally of the human species.

When we numb [hard feelings], we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness.

We're not very dangerous animals; we don't have a horn like a rhino or quills like a porcupine.

In mathematics and science, there is no difference in the intelligence of men and women. The difference in genes between men and women is simply the Y chromosome, which has nothing to do with intelligence.

Giving cancer to laboratory animals has not and will not help us to understand the disease or to treat those persons suffering from it.

Successful women are not liked. I think the biggest danger for women in science is colleagues who are not as good as you are.

People are pulled towards the best in themselves, and spotlighting the right is a much stronger approach than nagging.

Cryptography shifts the balance of power from those with a monopoly on violence to those who comprehend mathematics and security design.