Joshua Foer Quotes - Page 3

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• What distinguishes a great mnemonist, I learned, is the ability to create lavish images on the fly, to paint in the mind a scene so unlike any other it cannot be forgotten. And to do it quickly. Many competitive mnemonists argue that their skills are less a feat of memory than of creativity.

  Joshua Foer

  Memories, Creativity, Skills

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• To attain the rank of grand master of memory, you must be able to perform three seemingly superhuman feats. You have to memorize 1,000 digits in under an hour, the precise order of 10 shuffled decks of playing cards in the same amount of time, and one shuffled deck in less than two minutes. There are 36 grand masters of memory in the world.

  Joshua Foer

  Memories, Order, Two

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• As bad as we are at remembering names and phone numbers and word-for-word instructions from our colleagues, we have really exceptional visual and spatial memories.

  Joshua Foer

  Memories, Motivation, Inspiration

  "Can Anyone Learn To Be A Master Memorizer?". "TED Radio Hour" with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. May 24, 2013.

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• Truman Capote famously claimed to have nearly absolute recall of dialogue and used his prodigious memory as an excuse never to take notes or use a tape recorder, but I suspect his memory claims were just a useful cover to invent dialogue whole cloth.

  Joshua Foer

  Memories, Tape, Use

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• Once I'd reached the point where I could squirrel away more than 30 digits a minute in memory palaces, I still only sporadically used the techniques to memorize the phone numbers of people I actually wanted to call. I found it was just too simple to punch them into my cell phone.

  Joshua Foer

  Memories, Simple, Squirrels

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• Many memory techniques involve creating unforgettable imagery, in your minds eye. Thats an act of imagination. Creating really weird imagery really quickly was the most fun part of my training to compete in the U.S. Memory Competition.

  Joshua Foer

  Fun, Memories, Eye

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• Languages are something of a mess. They evolve over centuries through an unplanned, democratic process that leaves them teeming with irregularities, quirks, and words like 'knight.'

  Joshua Foer

  Knights, Language, Century

  "Utopian for Beginners" by Joshua Foer, www.newyorker.com. December 24&31, 2012.

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• All across Africa, the Pacific and the Americas, we find cultures that didn't know about mouth kissing until their first contact with European explorers. And the attraction was not always immediately apparent. Most considered the act of exchanging saliva revolting.

  Joshua Foer

  Kissing, Culture, Mouths

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• 'Moonwalking with Einstein' refers to a memory device I used when I memorized a deck of playing cards at the U.S. Memory Championship. When I competed in 2006, I set a new U.S. record by memorizing a deck of cards in one minute and 40 seconds. That record has since fallen.

  Joshua Foer

  Memories, Cards, Records

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• I have never been particularly good with languages. Despite a dozen years of Hebrew school and a lifetime of praying in the language, I'm ashamed to admit that I still can't read an Israeli newspaper. Besides English, the only language I speak with any degree of fluency is Spanish.

  Joshua Foer

  School, Years, Dozen

  "How I learned a language in 22 hours" by Joshua Foer, www.theguardian.com. November 9, 2012.

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