Jonah Lehrer Quotes

There is something scary about letting ourselves go. It means that we will screw up, that we will relinquish the possibility of perfection. It means that we will say things we didn’t mean to say and express feelings we can’t explain. It means that we will be onstage and not have complete control, that we won’t know what we’re going to play until we begin, until the bow is drawn across the strings. While this spontaneous method might be frightening, it’s also an extremely valuable source of creativity…the lesson about letting go is that we contain our own creativity. We are so worried about playing the wrong note or saying the wrong thing that we end up with nothing at all.

When the mind is denied the emotional sting of losing , it never figures out how to win.

there simply is no way to describe the past without lying. Our memories are not like fiction. They are fiction.

The world is more random than we can imagine. That's what our emotions can't understand.

Insights, after all, come from the overlap between seemingly unrelated thoughts. They emerge when concepts are transposed, when the rules of one place are shifted to a new domain.

Money chases good ideas

But the physical health of these young monkeys hid a devastating
sickness: they had been wrecked by loneliness. Their short
lives had been defined by total isolation, and they proved incapable
of even the most basic social interactions. They would maniacally
rock back and forth in their metal cages, sucking on
their thumbs until they bled. When they encountered other monkeys,
they would shriek in fear, run to the corners of their cages,
and stare at the floor. If they felt threatened, they would lash out
in vicious acts of violence. Sometimes these violent tendencies
were turned inward. One monkey ripped out its fur in bloody
clumps. Another gnawed off its own hand. Because of their early
deprivation, these babies had to be isolated for the rest of their
lives.

t. He decided to raise the next generation of baby
monkeys with two different pretend mothers. One was a wire
mother, formed out of wire mesh, while the other was a mother
made out of soft terry cloth. Harlow assumed that all things being
equal, the babies would prefer the cloth mothers, since they
would be able to cuddle with the fabric. To make the experiment
more interesting, Harlow added a slight twist to a few of the
cages. Instead of hand-feeding some babies, he put their milk bottles in the hands of the wire mothers. His question was simple:
what was more important, food or affection? Which mother
would the babies want more?
In the end, it wasn't even close. No matter which mother held
the milk, the babies always preferred the cloth mothers. The
monkeys would run over to the wire mothers and quickly sate
their hunger before immediately returning to the comforting folds
of cloth.

"There is a presence in what is missing." That presence is our own.

In fact, the only way to remain creative over time — to not be undone by our expertise — is to experiment with ignorance, to stare at things we don't fully understand.

You break out of the box by stepping into shackles.
From Imagine: How Creativity Works pg 23 (hardcover)

Every creative journey begins with a problem. It starts with a feeling of frustration, the dull ache of not being able to find the answer. We have worked hard, but we've hit the wall. We have no idea what to do next.

Simply translating the act of the scientist is the first job of any science writer. Then, in my more grandiose moments, the other big job of a science writer is to see connections, to see the forest composed by all these trees. The act of being a scientist, by definition, the act of being a modern scientist requires you to really focus. You have to drill down. You have to spend years studying one brick, one synaptic protein, one kind of thing that turns on the amygdala, one very particular question.

Why is a relaxed state of mind so important for creative insights? When our minds are at ease — when those alpha waves are rippling through the brain — we’re more likely to direct the spotlight of attention inward, toward that stream of remote associations emanating from the right hemisphere. In contrast, when we are diligently focused, our attention tends to be directed outward, toward the details of the problems we’re trying to solve. While this pattern of attention is necessary when solving problems an-alytically, it actually prevents us from detecting the connections that lead to insights. “That’s why so many insights happen during warm showers,” Bhattacharya says. “For many people, it’s the most relaxing part of the day.

Expertise is simply the wisdom that emerges from cellular error. Mistakes aren't things to be discouraged. On the contrary, they should be cultivated and carefully investigated.