Claudia Hammond > Quotes

“In fact the flexibility of our memories makes it relatively easy because we can meld all these different memories together seamlessly to invent a new imaginary scene, one which we have never even contemplated before, let alone witnessed. The flexibility of memory seems to be the key to imagining a future. Our millions of fragments of memories from different times of our lives are not set in stone; they can change, giving us endless, instant imaginative possibilities.”
― Claudia Hammond

“Our sense of time passing can even depend on the way we feel about our physical well-being. The psychologist John Bargh gave people anagrams to solve, then noted the time it took them to walk to the lift to go home after the experiment. Half the people were given anagrams of everyday words, but half were given words that might be associated with older people, such as ‘grey’ and ‘bingo’. When these people walked to the lift, these subtle hints about old age had primed them to such a degree that it changed their sense of timing and they walked more slowly.”
― Claudia Hammond, Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception

“I see the last two millennia as laid out in columns, like a reverse ledger sheet. It's as if I'm standing at the top of the twenty-first century looking downwards to 2000. Future centuries float as a gauzy sheet stretching over to the left. I also see people, architecture and events laid out chronologically in the columns. When I think of the year 1805, I see Trafalgar, women in the clothes of that era, famous people who lived then, the building, etc. The sixth to tenth centuries are very green, the Middle Ages are dark with vibrant splashes of red and blue and the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are brown with rich, lush colours in the furniture and clothing.”
― Claudia Hammond, Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception

“The experience of time feels personal”
― Claudia Hammond, Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception

“El psicólogo Sendhil Mullainathan, de la Universidad de Harvard, que ha realizado importantes investigaciones sobre el impacto cognitivo de la pobreza y fue uno de los responsables del estudio con los cultivadores”
― Claudia Hammond, La psicología del dinero: Por qué ejerce tal poder y cómo dominarlo

“Medieval illustrations of the mind from the fourteenth century depict memories like snakes feeding into the imagination and, long before this, both Aristotle and Galen described memories not as archives of our lives, but as tools for the imagination.”
― Claudia Hammond, Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception

“I wonder whether walking is a special way of resting because of its inherent internal balance. It lets us off working, but while we do it we’re not exactly doing nothing, so can obtain some peace without feeling guilty.”
― Claudia Hammond, The Art of Rest: How to Find Respite in the Modern Age

“En la National Gallery, en Washington, hay un cuadro horripilante del Bosco en el que un avaro, en su lecho de muerte, trata de coger”
― Claudia Hammond, La psicología del dinero: Por qué ejerce tal poder y cómo dominarlo