Quotes / Brain in a Jar

Shredder: This is Baxter Stockman? Huh. You've lost weight.
Stockman: Of course it's me! Look around you! Do you think this facility would have been possible without my genius? These imbeciles working for you have the technological savvy of amoeba!
Shredder: And you've been very naughty, Stockman; betraying me once too often. You should have quit while you were... a head.

— Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003), "Rogue in the House"

I float and I think
And I think and I think
About walking or driving a car
Or riding a bike
And I think and I float
Because I'm just a brain in a jar

— A brain in a jar, Pajama Sam

Spock: I seem to have a body which stretches into infinity.
Scott: Body? Why, you have none!
Spock: Then what am l?
McCoy: You are a disembodied brain.
Spock: Fascinating.

— Star Trek: The Original Series, "Spock's Brain"

"I am still here. I can see nothing, feel nothing. You have locked me into hell for eternity. If this is all there is, I would rather die now... Trapped like this, like a sponge beneath the sea! Yet even a sponge has more life than I. Can you understand a thousandth of my agony? I, Morbius, who once led the High Council of the Time Lords, and dreamed the greatest dreams in history! Now reduced to this, to the condition where I envy a vegetable!"

— Morbius, Doctor Who, "The Brain of Morbius"

"I'm nothing but a brain!"

— Hector Con Carne, Evil Con Carne: Bring Me the Face of Hector Con Carne

When a B'Omarr monk reaches the stage of final enlightenment, he has no further use for his body, his eyes, his ears, his senses. Nothing at all. The monk has achieved a stage of pure mental power, at one with the cosmos. When this occurs, the other, "lesser" monks help the enlightened one to shed his body, surgically. The enlightened brain is removed and placed in a nutrient-filled jar, forever freed from the distractions of the flesh and able to spend the years in perpetual thought.

— Senior Anthropologist Hoole, The Illustrated Star Wars Universe

"You have progressed rapidly on your spiritual path, Brother Fortuna. Your quest is at an end. Prepare yourself for enlightenment."

— A message from the B'Omarr Monks, of the Day's Annoyances: Big Fortuna's Tale

"The brains of Kandor's geniuses are preserved in chemicals, so they can continue to create great ideas, after their bodies have died! The brains can actually "write" their thoughts!"

— Kara, The Unknown Supergirl

What the hell is it about brains? We learn about them in health class, along with all the other organs that slosh around inside us. As a lifelong horror fan, I've seen a lot of innards tossed around, and they do rank on a kind of ooky-ometer: kidneys get sort of an eh, intestines a eew, hearts an eeeEEEEeeewww! (especially if still beating) and the liver a do they really jiggle that much? But nothing beats the superstitious dread summoned up by the brain. While all the other organs seem slimy, the brain seems sorta gooey; the others smooth and honest and proletarian, the brain all crinkly and duplicitous and alien. Perhaps it is the brain's function as receptacle of what is qualifiably us, possibly the very seat of our souls, that gives the brain this mythic power; place a brain on a table in the center of a room and just stare at it - yeah, right, it may be dead, but there's always a niggling little voice in the back of your head that's pretty sure it's still thinking. Probably about you.

— Dr. Freex, The Bad Movie Report

"No, that's not a brain in a jar, Mr. Paris—it's a sentient sponge in a variable gravity tank."

— Nee'Lix, Rocketship Voyager

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