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Joshua Foer Quotes

We reserve the term ‘genius’ for people who are creative, who are innovators, who think in ways that are entirely new. In the Middle Ages, the term ‘genius’ was reserved for people with the best memories. That is telling Picture Quote #1

If you want to live a memorable life, you have to be the kind of person who remembers to remember Picture Quote #1

During the Middle Ages they understood that words accompanied by imagery are much more memorable. By making the margins of a book colorful and beautiful, illuminations help make the text unforgettable. It’s unfortunate that we’ve lost the art of illumination Picture Quote #1

All across Africa, the Pacific and the Americas, we find cultures that didn’t know about mouth kissing until their first contact with European explorers. And the attraction was not always immediately apparent. Most considered the act of exchanging saliva revolting Picture Quote #1

If you want to make information stick, it’s best to learn it, go away from it for a while, come back to it later, leave it behind again, and once again return to it - to engage with it deeply across time. Our memories naturally degrade, but each time you return to a memory, you reactivate its neural network and help to lock it in Picture Quote #1

Languages are something of a mess. They evolve over centuries through an unplanned, democratic process that leaves them teeming with irregularities, quirks, and words like ‘knight.’ Picture Quote #1

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Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next - and disappear Picture Quote #1

Our lives are structured by our memories of events. Event X happened just before the big Paris vacation. I was doing Y in the first summer after I learned to drive. Z happened the weekend after I landed my first job. We remember events by positioning them in time relative to other events Picture Quote #1

Some memorizers arbitrarily associate each playing card with a familiar person or object, so that the king of clubs is represented by, say, Tony Danza. The grand masters associate each card with a person, an action, or an object so that every group of three cards can be converted into a sentence Picture Quote #1

I have never been particularly good with languages. Despite a dozen years of Hebrew school and a lifetime of praying in the language, I’m ashamed to admit that I still can’t read an Israeli newspaper. Besides English, the only language I speak with any degree of fluency is Spanish Picture Quote #1

The fact that books today are mostly a string of words makes it easier to forget the text. With the impact of the iPad and the future of the book being up for re-imagination, I wonder whether we’ll rediscover the importance of making texts richer visually Picture Quote #1

Photographic memory is often confused with another bizarre - but real - perceptual phenomenon called eidetic memory, which occurs in between 2 and 15 percent of children and very rarely in adults. An eidetic image is essentially a vivid afterimage that lingers in the mind’s eye for up to a few minutes before fading away Picture Quote #1

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The ‘OK Plateau’ is that place we all get to where we just stop getting better at something. Take typing, for example. You might type and type and type all day long, but once you reach a certain level, you just don’t get appreciably faster. That’s because it’s become automatic. You’ve moved it to the back of your mind’s filing cabinet Picture Quote #1

The sport of competitive memorizing is driven by a kind of arms race where every year somebody comes up with a new way to remember more stuff more quickly, and then the rest of the field has to play catch-up Picture Quote #1

There is a short window at the beginning of one’s professional life, when it is comparatively easy to take big risks. Make the most of that time, before circumstances make you risk averse Picture Quote #1

Our culture constantly inundates us with new information, and yet our brains capture so little of it. I can spend half a dozen hours reading a book and then have only a foggy notion of what it was about Picture Quote #1

Today we read books ‘extensively,’ often without sustained focus, and with rare exceptions we read each book only once. We value quantity of reading over quality of reading. We have no choice, if we want to keep up with the broader culture Picture Quote #1

Sequencing - the careful striptease by which you reveal information to the reader - matters in an article, but it is absolutely essential to a book Picture Quote #1

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When I climb into my car, I enter my destination into a GPS device, whose spatial memory supplants my own. I have photographs to store the images I want to remember, books to store knowledge and now, thanks to Google, I rarely have to remember anything more than the right set of search terms to access humankind’s collective memory Picture Quote #1

Once I’d reached the point where I could squirrel away more than 30 digits a minute in memory palaces, I still only sporadically used the techniques to memorize the phone numbers of people I actually wanted to call. I found it was just too simple to punch them into my cell phone Picture Quote #1

Growing up in the days when you still had to punch buttons to make a telephone call, I could recall the numbers of all my close friends and family. Today, I’m not sure if I know more than four phone numbers by heart. And that’s probably more than most Picture Quote #1

No one who set out to design a form of communication would ever end up with anything like English, Mandarin, or any of the more than six thousand languages spoken today Picture Quote #1

Woodworking requires a completely different kind of thinking and problem-solving ability than writing. With writing, you take a set of facts and ideas, and you reason your way forward to a story that pulls them together. With woodworking, you start with an end product in mind, and reason your way backward to the raw wood Picture Quote #1

Someday in the distant cyborg future, when our internal and external memories fully merge, we may come to possess infinite knowledge. But that’s not the same thing as wisdom Picture Quote #1

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We’ve outsourced our memories to digital devices, and the result is that we no longer trust our memories. We see every small forgotten thing as evidence that they’re failing us Picture Quote #1

We often talk about people with great memories as though it were some sort of an innate gift, but that is not the case. Great memories are learned. At the most basic level, we remember when we pay attention. We remember when we are deeply engaged Picture Quote #1

What makes things memorable is that they are meaningful, significant, colorful Picture Quote #1

To improve, we must watch ourselves fail, and learn from our mistakes Picture Quote #1

Our culture is an edifice built of externalized memories Picture Quote #1

A meaningful relationship between two people cannot sustain itself only in the present tense Picture Quote #1

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Friendship Quotes

Motivational Quotes

Inspirational Quotes

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Text Quotes

We reserve the term ‘genius’ for people who are creative, who are innovators, who think in ways that are entirely new. In the Middle Ages, the term ‘genius’ was reserved for people with the best memories. That is telling. (Joshua Foer Quotes) If you want to live a memorable life, you have to be the kind of person who remembers to remember (Joshua Foer Quotes) During the Middle Ages they understood that words accompanied by imagery are much more memorable. By making the margins of a book colorful and beautiful, illuminations help make the text unforgettable. It’s unfortunate that we’ve lost the art of illumination (Joshua Foer Quotes) All across Africa, the Pacific and the Americas, we find cultures that didn’t know about mouth kissing until their first contact with European explorers. And the attraction was not always immediately apparent. Most considered the act of exchanging saliva revolting (Joshua Foer Quotes) If you want to make information stick, it’s best to learn it, go away from it for a while, come back to it later, leave it behind again, and once again return to it - to engage with it deeply across time. Our memories naturally degrade, but each time you return to a memory, you reactivate its neural network and help to lock it in (Joshua Foer Quotes) Languages are something of a mess. They evolve over centuries through an unplanned, democratic process that leaves them teeming with irregularities, quirks, and words like ‘knight.’ (Joshua Foer Quotes) Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next - and disappear (Joshua Foer Quotes) Our lives are structured by our memories of events. Event X happened just before the big Paris vacation. I was doing Y in the first summer after I learned to drive. Z happened the weekend after I landed my first job. We remember events by positioning them in time relative to other events (Joshua Foer Quotes) Some memorizers arbitrarily associate each playing card with a familiar person or object, so that the king of clubs is represented by, say, Tony Danza. The grand masters associate each card with a person, an action, or an object so that every group of three cards can be converted into a sentence (Joshua Foer Quotes) I have never been particularly good with languages. Despite a dozen years of Hebrew school and a lifetime of praying in the language, I’m ashamed to admit that I still can’t read an Israeli newspaper. Besides English, the only language I speak with any degree of fluency is Spanish (Joshua Foer Quotes) The fact that books today are mostly a string of words makes it easier to forget the text. With the impact of the iPad and the future of the book being up for re-imagination, I wonder whether we’ll rediscover the importance of making texts richer visually (Joshua Foer Quotes) Photographic memory is often confused with another bizarre - but real - perceptual phenomenon called eidetic memory, which occurs in between 2 and 15 percent of children and very rarely in adults. An eidetic image is essentially a vivid afterimage that lingers in the mind’s eye for up to a few minutes before fading away (Joshua Foer Quotes) The ‘OK Plateau’ is that place we all get to where we just stop getting better at something. Take typing, for example. You might type and type and type all day long, but once you reach a certain level, you just don’t get appreciably faster. That’s because it’s become automatic. You’ve moved it to the back of your mind’s filing cabinet (Joshua Foer Quotes) The sport of competitive memorizing is driven by a kind of arms race where every year somebody comes up with a new way to remember more stuff more quickly, and then the rest of the field has to play catch-up. (Joshua Foer Quotes) There is a short window at the beginning of one’s professional life, when it is comparatively easy to take big risks. Make the most of that time, before circumstances make you risk averse. (Joshua Foer Quotes) Our culture constantly inundates us with new information, and yet our brains capture so little of it. I can spend half a dozen hours reading a book and then have only a foggy notion of what it was about. (Joshua Foer Quotes) Today we read books ‘extensively,’ often without sustained focus, and with rare exceptions we read each book only once. We value quantity of reading over quality of reading. We have no choice, if we want to keep up with the broader culture. (Joshua Foer Quotes) Sequencing - the careful striptease by which you reveal information to the reader - matters in an article, but it is absolutely essential to a book. (Joshua Foer Quotes) When I climb into my car, I enter my destination into a GPS device, whose spatial memory supplants my own. I have photographs to store the images I want to remember, books to store knowledge and now, thanks to Google, I rarely have to remember anything more than the right set of search terms to access humankind’s collective memory. (Joshua Foer Quotes) Once I’d reached the point where I could squirrel away more than 30 digits a minute in memory palaces, I still only sporadically used the techniques to memorize the phone numbers of people I actually wanted to call. I found it was just too simple to punch them into my cell phone. (Joshua Foer Quotes) Growing up in the days when you still had to punch buttons to make a telephone call, I could recall the numbers of all my close friends and family. Today, I’m not sure if I know more than four phone numbers by heart. And that’s probably more than most. (Joshua Foer Quotes) No one who set out to design a form of communication would ever end up with anything like English, Mandarin, or any of the more than six thousand languages spoken today. (Joshua Foer Quotes) Woodworking requires a completely different kind of thinking and problem-solving ability than writing. With writing, you take a set of facts and ideas, and you reason your way forward to a story that pulls them together. With woodworking, you start with an end product in mind, and reason your way backward to the raw wood. (Joshua Foer Quotes) Someday in the distant cyborg future, when our internal and external memories fully merge, we may come to possess infinite knowledge. But that’s not the same thing as wisdom. (Joshua Foer Quotes) We’ve outsourced our memories to digital devices, and the result is that we no longer trust our memories. We see every small forgotten thing as evidence that they’re failing us. (Joshua Foer Quotes) We often talk about people with great memories as though it were some sort of an innate gift, but that is not the case. Great memories are learned. At the most basic level, we remember when we pay attention. We remember when we are deeply engaged. (Joshua Foer Quotes) What makes things memorable is that they are meaningful, significant, colorful (Joshua Foer Quotes) To improve, we must watch ourselves fail, and learn from our mistakes (Joshua Foer Quotes) Our culture is an edifice built of externalized memories (Joshua Foer Quotes) A meaningful relationship between two people cannot sustain itself only in the present tense (Joshua Foer Quotes)

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