Date: September 5, 2011

"He [Derek Parfit] pictures his thinking self as a government minister sitting behind a large desk, who writes a question on a piece of paper and puts it in his out-tray. The minister then sits idly at the desk, twiddling his thumbs, while in some back room civil servants labor furiously, come up...

— MacFarquhar, Larissa

Date: September 2, 2011

"When we fight an urge, it feels like a strenuous effort, as if there were a homunculus in the head that physically impinged on a persistent antagonist."

— Pinker, Steven (b. 1954)

Date: September 2, 2011

"We speak of exerting will power, of forcing ourselves to go to work, of restraining ourselves and of controlling our temper, as if it were an unruly dog."

— Pinker, Steven (b. 1954)

Date: September 2, 2011

"The 'will' in willpower is not some mysterious 'free will,' a ghost in the machine that can do as it pleases, but a part of the machine itself."

— Pinker, Steven (b. 1954)

Date: September 2, 2011

"The disasters reveal a limitation of the muscle metaphor: certain evolutionarily prepared drives seem to withstand even the most bulked-up powers of will."

— Pinker, Steven (b. 1954)

Date: 2011

"Marx, his mind as hard and brilliant as a diamond, knew he would emerge the victor in any battle of wits."

— Gabriel, Mary

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: April 25, 2011

"If Eagleman's body bears no marks of his childhood accident, his mind has been deeply imprinted by it."

— Bilger, Burkhard

Date: April 25, 2011

"The brain is a remarkably capable chronometer for most purposes."

— Bilger, Burkhard

Date: April 25, 2011

"Like a racing engine, her mental clock went faster the hotter it got."

— Bilger, Burkhard