Julian Jaynes

"The central assertion of this view, I repeat, is that each new stage of words literally created new perceptions and attentions, and such new perceptions and attentions resulted in important cultural changes which are reflected in the archaeological record."

"This breakdown in the bicameral mind in what is called the Intermediate Period is reminiscent at least of those periodic breakdowns of Mayan civilizations when all authority suddenly collapsed, and the population melted back into tribal living in the jungles."

"What is the meaning of life?" This question has no answer except in the history of how it came to be asked. There is no answer because words have meaning, not life or persons or the universe itself. Our search for certainty rests in our attempts at understanding the history of all individual selves and all civilizations. Beyond that, there is only awe."

"Consciousness is a much smaller part of our mental life than we are conscious of, because we cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of."

"These esoteric poses of philosophy and even the paper theories of behaviorists are mere subterfuges to avoid the material we are talking about."

"The very reason we need logic at all is because most reasoning is not conscious at all."

"Memory is the medium of the must-have-been."

"We can only know in the nervous system what we have known in behavior first."

"It is by metaphor that language grows."

"For if consciousness is based on language, then it follows that it is of much more recent origin than has been heretofore supposed. Consciousness come after language! The implications of such a position are extremely serious."

"It is not always obvious that metaphor has played this all-important function. But this is because the concrete metaphiers become hidden in phonemic change, leaving the words to exist on their own. Even such an unmetaphorical-sounding word as the verb to be was generated from a metaphor. It comes from the Sanskrit bhu, “to grow, or make grow,” while the English forms am and is have evolved from the same root as the Sanskrit asmi, “to breathe.” It is something of a lovely surprise that the irregular conjugation of our most nondescript verb is thus a record of a time when man had no independent word for existence and could only say that something grows or that it “breathes.”"

"The Trojan War was directed by hallucinations. And the soldiers who were so directed were not at all like us. They were noble automatons who knew not what they did."