Cajal Quotes

Any man could, if he were so inclined, be the sculptor of his own brain.

Perseverance is a virtue of the less brilliant.

As long as our brain is a mystery, the universe, the reflection of the structure of the brain will also be a mystery.

Nothing inspires more reverence and awe in me than an old man who knows how to change his mind.

Heroes and scholars represent the opposite extremes... The scholar struggles for the benefit of all humanity, sometimes to reduce physical effort, sometimes to reduce pain, and sometimes to postpone death, or at least render it more bearable. In contrast, the patriot sacrifices a rather substantial part of humanity for the sake of his own prestige. His statue is always erected on a pedestal of ruins and corpses... In contrast, all humanity crowns a scholar, love forms the pedestal of his statues, and his triumphs defy the desecration of time and the judgment of history.

Deficiencies of innate ability may be compensated for through persistent hard work and concentration. One might say that work substitutes for talent, or better yet that it creates talent.”6 —Santiago Ramón y Cajal

Our novice runs the risk of failure without additional traits: a strong inclination toward originality, a taste for research, and a desire to experience the incomparable gratification associated with the act of discovery itself.

It is important to realize that if certain areas of science appear to be quite mature, others are in the process of development, and yet others remain to be born.

The mediocre can be educated; geniuses educate themselves.

If a solution fails to appear ... and yet we feel success is just around the corner, try resting for a while. ... Like the early morning frost, this intellectual refreshment withers the parasitic and nasty vegetation that smothers the good seed. Bursting forth at last is the flower of truth.

It is strange to see how the populace, which nourishes its imagination with tales of witches or saints, mysterious events and extraordinary occurrences, disdains the world around it as commonplace, monotonous and prosaic, without suspecting that at bottom it is all secret, mystery, and marvel.

It is fair to say that, in general, no problems have been exhausted; instead, men have been exhausted by the problems

The indescribable pleasure—which pales the rest of life's joys—is abundant compensation for the investigator who endures the painful and persevering analytical work that precedes the appearance of the new truth, like the pain of childbirth. It is true to say that nothing for the scientific scholar is comparable to the things that he has discovered. Indeed, it would be difficult to find an investigator willing to exchange the paternity of a scientific conquest for all the gold on earth. And if there are some who look to science as a way of acquiring gold instead of applause from the learned, and the personal satisfaction associated with the very act of discovery, they have chosen the wrong profession.

«poco basta cada día si cada día logramos ese poco».

What a wonderful stimulant it would be for the beginner if his instructor, instead of amazing and dismaying him with the sublimity of great past achievements, would reveal instead the origin of each scientific discovery, the series of errors and missteps that preceded it— information that, from a human perspective, is essential to an accurate explanation of the discovery. Skillful pedagogical tactics such as this would instill the conviction that the discoverer, along with being an illustrious person of great talent and resolve, was in the final analysis a human being just like everyone else.

Oh comforting solitude, how favorable thou art to original thought!

All outstanding work, in art as well as in science, results from immense zeal applied to a great idea.

consider the possibility that any man could, if he were so inclined, be the sculptor of his own brain, and that even the least gifted may, like the poorest land that has been well cultivated and fertilized, produce an abundant harvest.

A synthesis—an abstraction, chunk, or gist idea—is a neural pattern. Good chunks form neural patterns that resonate, not only within the subject we’re working in, but with other subjects and areas of our lives. The abstraction helps you transfer ideas from one area to another. That’s why great art, poetry, music, and literature can be so compelling. When we grasp the chunk, it takes on a new life in our own minds—we form ideas that enhance and enlighten the neural patterns we already possess, allowing us to more readily see and develop other related patterns. Once we have created a chunk as a neural pattern, we can more easily pass that chunked pattern to others, as Cajal and other great artists, poets, scientists, and writers have done for millennia, Once other people grasp that chunk, not only can they use it, but also they can more easily create similar chunks that apply to other areas in their lives—an important part of the creative process.

How many interesting facts fail to be converted into fertile discoveries because their first observers regard them as natural and ordinary things!....It is strange to see how the populace, which nourishes its imagination with tales of witches or saints, mysterious events and extraordinary occurrences, disdains the world around it as commonplace, monotonous and prosaic, without suspecting that at bottom it is all secret, mystery and marvel.

particularly interesting about Cajal is that he achieved his greatness even though he wasn’t a genius—at least, not in the conventional sense of the term. Cajal deeply regretted that he never had a “quickness, certainty, and clearness in the use of words.”10 What’s worse is that when Cajal got emotional, he lost his way with words almost entirely. He couldn’t remember things by rote, which made school, where parroting back information was prized, agony for him. The best Cajal could do was to grasp and remember key ideas; he frequently despaired his modest powers of understanding.11 Yet some of the most exciting areas of neuroscientific research today are rooted in Cajal’s original findings.12

A synthesis—an abstraction, chunk, or gist idea—is a neural pattern. Good chunks form neural patterns that resonate, not only within the subject we’re working in, but with other subjects and areas of our lives. The abstraction helps you transfer ideas from one area to another. That’s why great art, poetry, music, and literature can be so compelling. When we grasp the chunk, it takes on a new life in our own minds—we form ideas that enhance and enlighten the neural patterns we already possess, allowing us to more readily see and develop other related patterns. Once we have created a chunk as a neural pattern, we can more easily pass that chunked pattern to others, as Cajal and other great artists, poets, scientists, and writers have done for millennia, Once other people grasp that chunk, not only can they use it, but also they can more easily create similar chunks that apply to other areas in their lives—an important part of the creative process.

of now, the main difference has been found in the HAR1 (human accelerated region 1), a segment of a recently discovered RNA gene. The RNA that is expressed in early development (HAR1F) is specific to the reelin-producing Cajal-Retzius cells in the brain. HAR1F comes to expression together with reelin in the seventeenth to nineteenth weeks of fetal development, a crucial stage in the formation of the six-layered cerebral cortex. The mutations in this human gene are probably over a million years old and could have played a crucial role in the emergence of modern humankind. Throughout our evolution, an enormous

If our professions do not allow us to devote more than two hours a day to a subject, do not abandon the work on the pretext that we need four or six.

Any man could, if he were so inclined, be the sculptor of his own brain.” —Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Spanish neuroanatomist and Nobel Laureate

[Las neuronas son] las misteriosas mariposas del alma; quizás un día, con el movimiento de sus alas, nos aclararán el secreto de la vida mental

Great men are at times geniuses, occasionally children, and always incomplete.

It is as if the mental image that is studied over a period of time were to sprout appendages like an ameba— outgrowths that extend in all directions while avoiding one obstacle after another—before interdigitating with related ideas.

The secret lies in the method of work; in taking advantage of as much time as possible for the activity; in not retiring for the day until at least two or three hours are dedicated to the task; in wisely constructing a dike in front of the intellectual dispersion and waste of time required by social activity; and finally, in avoiding as much as possible the malicious gossip of the café and other entertainment—which squanders our nervous energy (sometimes even causing disgust) and draws us away from our main task with childish conceits and futile pursuits.

Let us not be deceived by optimism and good intentions. Despite their exceptional merit, and the zeal and energy they display in the classroom, such teachers suffer from a disease of the will—although psychologists may not see it this way. Their sluggishness and neglect may not justify a diagnosis of abulia or loss of will power, but their students and friends may nevertheless consider them abnormal and suggest some adequate form of spiritual therapy, with all due respect to their fine intellectual abilities.

Fortunately, we needn’t dwell at length on this point in order to correct mistaken social values. No one would deny the fact that he who knows and acts is the one who counts, not he who knows and falls asleep.

There are highly cultivated, wonderfully endowed minds whose wills suffer from a particular form of lethargy, which is all the more serious because it is not apparent to them and is usually not thought of as being particularly important. Its undeniable symptoms include a facility for exposition, a creative and restless imagination, an aversion to the laboratory, and an indomitable dislike for concrete science and seemingly unimportant data. They claim to view things on a grand scale; they live in the clouds. They prefer the book to the monograph, brilliant and audacious hypotheses to classic but sound concepts. When faced with a difficult problem, they feel an irresistible urge to formulate a theory rather than to question nature. As soon as they happen to notice a slight, half-hidden, analogy between two phenomena, or succeed in fitting some new data or other into the framework of a general theory—whether true or false—they dance for joy and genuinely believe that they are the most admirable of reformers. The method is legitimate in principle, but they abuse it by falling into the pit of viewing things from a single perspective. The essential thing for them is the beauty of the concept. It matters very little whether the concept itself is based on thin air, so long as it is beautiful and ingenious, well-thought-out and symmetrical.

Great men are at times geniuses, occasionally children, and always incomplete. Even when the work of a genius is subjected to critical analysis and no errors are found, it is important to realize that everything he has discovered in a particular field is almost nothing in comparison with what remains to be discovered. Nature offers inexhaustible wealth to all. There is certainly no reason to envy our predecessors, or to exclaim with Alexander following the victories of Philip, "My father is going to leave me nothing to conquer!

Even in the most exact sciences there are always some laws that are maintained exclusively through the force of authority. To demonstrate their inaccuracy with new research is always an excellent way to begin genuine scientific work.

And without listening to the reply, the erudite one expounds with warm eloquence some wild and audacious proposal with no basis in reality and endurable only in the context of a chat about spiritual matters.

It is fair to say that, in general, no problems have been exhausted; instead, men have been exhausted by the problems. Soil that appears impoverished to one researcher reveals its fertility to another.

In other words, when they are not simply empty formulas they become formal expressions of the mechanism of understanding used during the process of research.

It is needless to point out that the investigator will be concerned less with doctrine and philosophical creed—which unfortunately change every fifteen or twenty years—than with the criteria of truth and the standards of critical judgment.

a strong inclination toward originality, a taste for research, and a desire to experience the incomparable gratification associated with the act of discovery itself.

General education. The need for specialization. Foreign languages. How monographs should be read. The absolute necessity of seeking inspiration in nature. Mastery of technique. In search of original data

The thrill of life is not about who we are but about who we are in the process of becoming.” “Dreams are the means by which the visual cortex prevents takeover.” Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculptor of his own brain. —SANTIAGO RAMÓN Y CAJAL (1852–1934), neuroscientist and Nobel laureate

Numerous scientists have also advocated art as a way to train observation, reiterating the theme that “that which has not been drawn has not been seen.” As Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the great turn-of-the-century neuroanatomist, explained, “If our study is concerned with an object related to natural history, etc., observation will be accompanied by sketching; for aside from other advantages, the act of depicting something disciplines and strengthens attention, obliging us to cover the whole of the phenomenon. . . . It is not without reason [therefore] that all great observers are skillful in sketching.

Gustavo Solivellas dice: "La vanidad nos persigue hasta en el lecho de la muerte. La soportamos con entereza porque deseamos superar su terrible grandeza y cautivar la admiración de los espectadores" (Santiago Ramón y Cajal)

«Informarse como es debido implica un esfuerzo activo que raramente realizamos».

The great Spanish neuroanatomist Santiago Ramon y Cajal concluded his 1913 treatise “Degeneration and Regeneration of the Nervous System” with this declaration: “In adult centres the nerve paths are something fixed, ended, immutable. Everything may die, nothing may be regenerated.” Cajal based his pessimistic conclusion on his meticulous studies of brain anatomy after injury, and his gloomy sentiment remained neuroscience dogma for almost a century. “We are still taught that the fully mature brain lacks the intrinsic mechanisms needed to replenish neurons and reestablish neuronal networks after acute injury or in response to the insidious loss of neurons seen in neurodegenerative diseases,” noted the neurologists Daniel Lowenstein and Jack Parent in 1999.

A título provisional, considera con zoólogos y anatómicos que el hombre tiene más de mono que de ángel y que carece de títulos para envanecerse y engreírse.

No se puede rechazar a priori la posibilidad de que el bosque inextricable del cerebro, del que nos imaginamos haber determinado las últimas ramas y hojas, no posea algún enigmático sistema de filamentos enlazando el conjunto neuronal como las lianas sujetan los árboles de los bosques tropicales. SANTIAGO RAMÓN Y CAJAL Conferencia del premio Nobel, 12 de diciembre de 1906.

efore the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation series of books began to appear in 1979, the scientific autobiography was a largely unfamiliar genre. One recalls Cajal's extraordinary Recollections of My Life, translated into English in 1937, and the little gem of autobiography written by Charles Darwin for his grandchildren in 1876. One supposes that this form of scientific writing is scarce because busy scientists would rather continue to work on scientific problems than to indulge in a retrospective exercise using a writing style