“Our talent for division, for seeing the parts, is of staggering importance – second only to our capacity to transcend it, in order to see the whole. These gifts of the left hemisphere have helped us achieve nothing less than civilisation itself, with all that that means. Even if we could abandon them, which of course we can't, we would be fools to... See more

“So thinking is prior to language. What language contributes is to firm up certain particular ways of seeing the world and give fixity to them. This has its good side, and its bad. It aids consistency of reference over time and space. But it can also exert a restrictive force on what and how we think. It represents a more fixed version of the world... See more

“The model we choose to use to understand something determines what we find.”

― Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

“Compared with music all communication by words is shameless; words dilute and brutalise; words depersonalise; words make the uncommon common.”

― Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

“So the left hemisphere needs certainty and needs to be right. The right hemisphere makes it possible to hold several ambiguous possibilities in suspension together without premature closure on one outcome.”

― Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

“Meaning emerges from engagement with the world, not from abstract contemplation of it.”

― Iain McGilchrist, The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning

“None of us actually lives as though there were no truth. Our problem is more with the notion of a single, unchanging truth.

The word 'true' suggest a relationship between things: being true to someone or something, truth as loyalty, or something that fits, as two surfaces may be said to be 'true.' It is related to 'trust,' and is fundamentally a ma... See more

“we have to be constantly vigilant to undermine language’s attempt to undermine our understanding.”

― Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

“Emotion is inseparable from the body in which it is felt, and emotion is also the basis for our engagement with the world.”

― Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World