Date: 1902

"Suddenly, in the midst of some train of thought, rises the sought-for line, like a ghost out of a gulf."

— Spiller, Gustav (1864-1940)

Date: 1902

"If it were otherwise, no one could even set down on paper a closely reasoned argument, for the attention would be skipping like a stone hurrying down a sharp incline, or it would be moving hither and thither like a helpless shuttlecock at the mercy of eager players."

— Spiller, Gustav (1864-1940)

Date: November 22, 1990

"One is not an immaterial soul, floating around in a machine."

— Sacks, Oliver (b. 1933)

Date: August 5, 2009

"That reminds me of a wonderful quote from a professional cartoonist who also teaches a university level course on comedy, who said he thought of 'humour as a necessary counterweight to the hegemony of reason.'"

— Bhalla, Jag

Date: June 1, 2010

"Anyone who's closely read Mr. Hitchens's work -- including his best-selling manifesto 'God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything' (2007) -- or seen him do battle on cable news programs, knows that he has a mind like a Swiss Army knife, ready to carve up or unbolt an opponent's arguments ...

— Garner, Dwight (b. 1965)

Date: June 1, 2010

"His mental Swiss Army knife also contains, happily, a corkscrew."

— Garner, Dwight (b. 1965)

Date: March 10, 2011

"Richards’s sharpness is surprising coming from a guy whose mind, everyone had to assume, was by now a salvage heap."

— Chiasson, Dan

Date: October 7, 2011

"In the wayward note, the bumps and curves of the author's mind seem to be laid plain on the paper."

— Horowitz, Alexandra

Date: March 11, 2011

"The huge submerged bulk of the mental iceberg, with its stores of memory and acquired skills that have become automatic, like language, driving and etiquette, supplies people with the raw materials on which they can exercise their reason and decide what to think and what to do."

— Nagel, Thomas (b. 1937)

Date: March 9, 2012

"If we acquire a bad habit this way it is very hard to change, because its grooves are so well worn in our minds."

— Wilson, Timothy D.