I think every writer should have tattooed backwards on his forehead, like ambulance on ambulances, the words 'everybody needs an editor.
Cure the symptoms, cure the disease.
Science is the most exciting and sustained enterprise of discovery in the history of our species. It is the great adventure of our time. We live today in an era of discovery that far outshadows the discoveries of the New World five hundred years ago.
In truth, one of our company, the solemn warrior Ecthgow, was so demented from liquor that he was drunk while still upon his horse, and he fell attempting to dismount. Now the horse kicked him in the head, and I feared for his safety, but Ecthgow laughed and kicked the horse back.
Praise not the day until evening has come, a woman until she is burnt, a sword until it is tried, a maiden until she is married, ice until it has been crossed, beer until it has been drunk.
Human intelligence was more trouble than it was worth. It was more destructive than creative, more confusing than revealing, more discouraging than satisfying, more spiteful than charitable.
Expectation works in mysterious ways---and totally unconsciously.
They always say they didn't. I never heard of one who said, 'You know, I deserve this.' Never happens.
Science is a kind of glorified tailoring enterprise, a method for taking measurements that describe something ? reality ? that may not be understood at all.
Often I feel I go to some distant region of the world to be reminded of who I really am.
We are one of only three species on our planet that can claim to be self-aware, yet self-delusion may be a more significant characteristic of our kind.
For our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behavior. We innovate new behavior to adapt.
If true computer music were ever written, it would only be listened to by other computers.
Safety is the last refuge of the scoundrel!
Friendships are nice. So is competence.
Science is the business of generating testable hypotheses.
Nobody smart knows what they want to do until they get into their twenties or thirties.
Nobody wants to feel they're not a rebel.
But complex animals had obtained their adaptive flexibility at some cost--they had traded one dependency for another. It was no longer necessary to change their bodies to adapt, because now their adaptation was behavior, socially determined. That behavior required learning. In a sense, among higher animals adaptive fitness was no longer transmitted to the next generation by DNA at all. It was now carried by teaching.
I want a news service that tells me what no one knows but is true nonetheless.
I hadn't traveled with the intention of learning about anything except myself. And the real point of all this travel was not what I had come to believe or disbelieve about the wider world, but what I had learned about myself.
The American media produce a product of very poor quality. Its information is not reliable, it has too much chrome and glitz, its doors rattle, it breaks down almost immediately, and it's sold without warranty. It's flashy, but it's basically junk.
In our modern complex world, fundamentalism is dangerous because of its rigidity and its imperviousness to other ideas.
You know what's wrong with scientific power? It's a form of inherited wealth. And you know what assholes congenitally rich people are.
Sneaking up on it sometimes helps: I've found I can be very productive for an hour before dinner, because there obviously isn't enough time to really do anything, so I can tell myself I'm just screwing around.
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