“Whatever we call it - mind, character, soul - we like to think we possess something that is greater than the sum of our neurons and that animates us.”

—  Susanna Kaysen

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Whatever we call it - mind, character, soul - we like to think we possess something that is greater than the sum of our…" by Susanna Kaysen?
Susanna Kaysen photo
Susanna Kaysen 65
American writer 1948

Related quotes

Joseph Addison photo

“If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 535 (13 November 1712).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

Jonah Lehrer photo

“We feel like more than just the sum of a trillion neurons. We feel like more than just three pounds of wet flesh, and so simply describing the brain in terms of its neurotransmitters and neurons and all these chemicals and exciting ingredients doesn't fully grapple with what it feels like to be human, the first person subjective experience of being a conscious being. When you think about the really grand epic questions of neuroscience … what is consciousness? How can we form a scientific explanation for consciousness, for human experience? That is the holy grail.”

Jonah Lehrer (1981) American science writer

Chimeras of Experience: A Conversation with Jonah Lehrer (2009)

Alex Grey photo

“Our minds are artists,
always drawing lines.

Making decisions, differentiating
One thing from another,
Calling it something.

This is the way we know.
This is how we think.

We define
by drawing the line.”

Alex Grey (1953) American artist

Art Psalms (2008), Let Love Draw the Line

“We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer
John Green photo

“When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.”

John Green book Looking for Alaska

Miles "Pudge" Halter, pp. 220-221
Looking for Alaska (2005)

Samuel Butler photo

“Animals and plants cannot understand our business, so we have denied that they can understand their own. What we call inorganic matter cannot understand the animals' and plants' business, we have therefore denied that it can understand anything whatever.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Organic and Inorganic
Source: The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VI - Mind and Matter

John Locke photo

“We are like chameleons; we take our hue and the color of our moral character from those who are around us.”

John Locke (1632–1704) English philosopher and physician

Attributed to Locke on various quotes sites and on social media, this quotation is a false rendering of "We are all a sort of chameleons, that still take a tincture from things near us: nor is it to be wondered at in children, who better understand what they see, than what they hear" from Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693).
Misattributed

Orison Swett Marden photo

“What we do when defeat stares us in the face is the real touchstone of character. But the very fact that success has time and again proved the means of awakening people to the knowledge of greater ability than they ever before dreamed they possessed, ought to hearten and encourage us to keep on no matter how often we fail. If we brace ourselves and continue to push forward we will ultimately win out.”

Orison Swett Marden (1850–1924) American writer

Everybody Ahead (or, Getting the Most Out of Life) (1916).

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“Whatever limits us we call Fate.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Fate
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)

Related topics