6 Quotes & Sayings By Mark Samuels

Mark Samuels is a self-styled "unconventional neuroscientist" who is a world authority on the inner workings of the brain. He has a PhD in neuroscience from Cambridge University and a BA in psychology from the University of Exeter. He has been a senior lecturer in psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London, and he now works as a lecturer in psychology at Bournemouth University. Samuels has been an active science populariser since his first book, The Brain that Changes Itself, was published in 1998. He has authored or co-authored ten books, as well as numerous articles and research papers Read more

His most recent book is The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science (2014).

1
I don’t want my pain blanked out, he thought to himself; I need to keep my pain. It is a part of who I am, every bit as integral as the joy I’ve felt. Mark Samuels
2
I emphasise it now; I had little-to-nothing in common with other people. Their values I did not comprehend, their ideals were to me a living horror. Call it ostentatious but I even sought to provide tangible proof of my withdrawal from the world. I posted a sign in the entrance to the building wherein I dwelt; a sign that indicated I had no wish to be disturbed by anyone, for any purpose whatsoever. As these convictions took hold of me and, as I denied, nay even repudiated, the hold that the current society of men possesses over its ranks, as I retreated into a hermitage of the imagination, disentangling my own concerns from those paramount to the age in which I happened to be born, an age with no claim to be more enlightened, significant or progressive than any other, I tried to make a stand for the spirit. Tyranny, in this land, I was told, was dead. But I contend that the replacement of one form of tyranny with another is still tyranny. The secret police now operate not via the use of brute force in dark underground cells; they operate instead by a process of open brainwashing that is impossible to avoid altogether. The torture cells are not secret; they are everywhere, and so ubiquitous that they are no longer seen for what they are. One may abandon television; one may abandon all forms of broadcast media, even the Internet, but the advertising hoardings in every street, on vehicles, inside transport centres, are still there. And they contain the same messages. Only the very rich can avoid their clutches utterly. Those who have obtained sufficient wealth may choose their own surroundings, free from the propaganda of a decayed futurity. And yet, and yet, in order to obtain such a position of freedom it is first necessary to have served the ideals of the tyranny slavishly, thereby validating it.(" The Tower") . Mark Samuels
3
One may escape from the prisons of experience, ideology or philosophy, but it is impossible to escape from the reality of one's innermost self. Understanding this, I had freed myself from nostalgia, and having done so, what remained was to free myself from the prospect of the future.(" The Tower") Mark Samuels
4
I believe, ' Muswell once said, 'that mental isolation is the essence of weird fiction. Isolation when confronted with disease, with madness, with horror and with death. These are the reverberations of the infinity that torments us.(" The White Hands") Mark Samuels
5
A pessimist is a liar, unless he destroys himself, and no less of a hypocrite than a priest who defiles the holy. Mark Samuels