Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind Quotes

“As we have seen, the modern mind has a distorted image of itself that leads it to neglect some of its own most valuable learning capacities. We now know that the brain is built to linger as well as to rush, and that slow knowing sometimes leads to better answers. We know that knowledge makes itself known through sensations, images, feelings and inklings, as well as through clear, conscious thoughts. Experiments tell us that just interacting with complex situations without trying to figure them out can deliver a quality of understanding that defies reason and articulation. Other studies have shown that confusion may be a vital precursor to the discovery of a good idea. To be able to meet the uncertain challenges of the contemporary world, we need to heed the message of this research, and to expand our repertoire of ways of learning and knowing to reclaim the full gamut of cognitive possibilities.”
― Guy Claxton, Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: How Intelligence Increases When You Think Less

“Broad, diffuse attention is precisely what is needed in non-routine, ill-defined or impoverished situations, where data is patchy, conventional solutions don’t work, and incidental details may make all the difference. And that is why too much effort inhibits creativity.”
― Guy Claxton, Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: How Intelligence Increases When You Think Less

“Everything is gestation and bringing forth. To let each impression and each germ of a feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one’s own intelligence, and await with deep humility and patience the birth-hour of a new clarity: that alone is living the artist’s life. Being an artist means not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap, and stands confident in the storms of spring without the fear that after them may come no summer. It does come. But it comes only to the patient, who are there as though eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly still and wide. Rainer Maria Rilke”
― Guy Claxton, Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: How Intelligence Increases When You Think Less