David Eagleman Quotes

When we have a good balance between thinking and feeling... our actions and lives are always the richer for it.

Reason without passion is sterile, but passion without reason is hysteria.

Reason and emotion counsel and supplement each other. Whoever heeds only the one, and puts aside the other, recklessly deprives himself of a portion of the aid granted us for the regulation of our conduct.

Without love, intelligence is dangerous; without intelligence, love is not enough.

Human rationality depends critically on sophisticated emotionality. It is only because our emotional brain works so well that our reasoning can work at all.

For Reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and Passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.

There is still a popular fantasy, long since disproved by both psychoanalysis and science, and never believed by any poet or mystic, that it is possible to have a thought without a feeling. It isn’t. When we are objective we are subjective too. When we are neutral we are involved. When we say ‘I think’ we don’t leave our emotions outside the door. To tell someone not to be emotional is to tell them to be dead.

It's all emotion. But there's nothing wrong with emotion. When we are in love, we are not rational; we are emotional. When we are on vacation, we are not rational; we are emotional. When we are happy, we are not [rational]. In fact, in more cases than not, when we are rational, we're actually unhappy. Emotion is good; passion is good. Being into what we're into, provided that it's a healthy pursuit, it's a good thing.

Every wave of passion restrained is a balance in your favor. It is therefore good policy not to return anger for anger, as with all true morality.

I still don’t know if this is a good quality or a bad one, to be able to be in the moment and then step out of it.

In all human affairs, the wisest course is to be passionate about the role of reason and reasonable about the role of passion.

What I believe in my heart must make sense in my mind.

In making our decisions, we must use the brains that God has given us. But we must also use our hearts, which He also gave us.

And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may livethrough its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.

If the mind is dominated by hatred, the best part of the brain, which is used to judge right and wrong, does not function properly.

Philosophers have done wisely when they have told us to cultivate our reason rather than our feelings, for reason reconciles us to the daily things of existence; our feelings teach us to yearn after the far, the difficult, the unseen.

When a child shuts down his painful emotional side, he also loses the ability to express his joyous side. Emotions are a whole. With anger comes the ability to express delight; with sadness comes the ability to express lightheartedness. This is the breadth of emotion that allows an adult to experience intimacy with a spouse, with God, and with his children

A brain with no heart and no reasoning ... well, nothing is more meaningless.

As our heart summons our strength, our wisdom must direct it.

Oftentimes, those special brains, the ones that are capable of focusing more intently than others, do so at the expense of emotional maturity

Analytic and romantic understanding should be united at a basic level. Reassimilate the passions from which the rational mind fled.

Your mind must control, but you must have heart . . . . Give your feeling free.

Balance. It was all about balance. That had been one of the first things that she had learned: the centre of the seesaw has neither up nor down, but upness and downness flow through it while it remains unmoved. You had to be the centre of the seesaw so the pain flowed through you, not into you. It was very hard. But she could do it!

Mental or spiritual health, which is rationality, makes for progress, and the future demands greater and greater mental or spiritual health, greater and greater rationality. The brain must dominate and direct both the individual and society in the time to come, not the belly and the heart.

Emotional makeup is more important than technical skill