Date: 1793

In sleep "Our tired attention resigns the helm, ideas swim before us in wild confusion, and are attended with less and less distinctness, till at length they leave no traces in the memory."

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1902

"Looking back upon our own thought, we observe no Subject, like an admiral on the bridge of his flagship, dictating and controlling, some man above the man or in the man; we only note a process of development which requires no such assumption."

— Spiller, Gustav (1864-1940)

Date: 1995, 2002

"However, as I said last night, we just ask for this because most of us consider ourselves as chauffeurs inside our bodies, which we own in the same way as we own a car. When it goes wrong we take it to the mechanic to fix it and we do not really identify with our body, just as we do not really i...

— Watts, Alan (1915-1973)

Date: 2000

"It's the medium-sized thoughts that jump ship in an emergency."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: Summer 2009

"It is in this sense that the first-personal perspective is strictly unavoidable: I am not a passenger on a vessel pulled hither and yon by impulses and desires; I have to steer."

— Pippin, Robert B. (b. 1948)

Date: March 31, 2009

"We use emotions, the brain's steersman, to assign value to our experiences and to future possibilities, often allowing us to evaluate potential outcomes efficiently and rapidly when information is uncertain."

— Aamodt, Sandra; Wang, Sam

Date: October 31, 2011

"In short, the brain sustains a sense of unity not just in the presence of its left and right co-pilots."

— Carey, Benedict (b. 1960)

Date: May 20, 2013

"As this book began to veer astray, I felt that Lindemann's mind was like a sleek yacht built for exhilarating grace and speed but commandeered by moldy tyrants for mundane use as a sluggish freighter."

— Paglia, Camille (b. 1947)