A true scientist is bored by knowledge; it is the assault on ignorance that motivates him - the mysteries that previous discoveries have revealed.

Futurology always ends up telling you more about your own time than about the future.

Society works not because we have consciously invented it, but because it is an ancient product of our evolved predispositions. It is literally in our nature.

The interaction of genetic and external influences makes my behaviour unpredictable, but not undetermined. In the gap between those words lies freedom.

It is not a zero sum game. The simple idea of the gains from trade lies at the heart of the modern and the ancient economy, not the power of capital. There is nothing else to it.

Intelligence will become more and more collective; innovation and order will become more and more bottom-up.

Prosperity has brought complications. Our lives are busier, faster, more stressful. They're nostalgic for a simpler, slower time.

The genome is a book that wrote itself, continually adding, deleting and amending over four billion years.

At some point, human intelligence became collective and cumulative in a way that happened to no other animal.

Our minds have been built by selfish genes, but they have been built to be social, trustworthy and cooperative.

Trade is 10 times as old as farming.

Wisdom always ends up in gain

Death is lighter than a feather. Duty, heavier than a mountain.

The world is a prison for the believer and paradise for a non-believer.

I'm terrified of being bored and not learning.

Think of your pension and start saving. Like my father, I have been a spendthrift, and I regret that.

You're just a bee charmer, Idgie Threadgoode. That's what you are, a bee charmer.

Rafferty [Law] plays three or four instruments. He is very gifted. Whereas I pick instruments up and kind of stare at them and go, "I can't ever possibly play this." And I don't!

Infinite possibility in all things is a certainty. That pretty much covers theology and philosophy for me.

I'm for the Wall Street Occupiers. But will they accept me when they find out I sell packaged mortgage default instruments to children?

My verse has brought me no roubles to spare: no craftsmen have made mahogany chairs for my house.