Humans didn't really fight over skin tone or ideology; those were just handy cues for kin-selection purposes. Ultimately it always came down to bloodlines and limited resources.

People aren't rational. We're not thinking machines, we're - we're feeling machines that happen to think.

There's no such things as survival of the fittest. Survival of the most adequate, maybe. It doesn't matter whether a solution's optimal. All that matters is whether it beats the alternative.

The most altruistic and sustainable philosophies fail before the brute brain stem imperative of self-interest.

But when the flash flood crosses your path, when the lion leaps at you from the grasses, advanced self-awareness is an unaffordable indulgence. The brain stem does its best.

Science is so powerful that it drags us kicking and screaming towards the truth despite our best efforts to avoid it.

This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: You hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the speech from the screams.

I am the bridge between the bleeding edge and the dead center. I stand between the Wizard of Oz and the man behind the curtain. I am the curtain.

What's the difference between being dead, and just not knowing you're alive?

Radar is too long in the tooth for fine detail.

But pattern-matching doesn't equal comprehension.

Satan seemed to wink at her. She supposed he would know her soul. She couldn’t remember selling it, least she wasn’t rich, but perhaps it wasn’t worth much.

Sexism has never rendered women powerless. It has either suppressed their strength or exploited it.

There is no Past, so long as Books shall live!

People around the world are confusing the therapeutic value of self-expression with permission to manipulate others with their wounds.

Passion does not blind. No. Passion is sanity, and the woman you love, she is the only person you will ever really understand.

Wise kings wear shabby clothes, and leave the gold lace to the drum major.

I'm not saying that the gas chambers didn't exist. I couldn't see them myself.

Obviously we want to keep the jobs we've got.

SCCS, the source motel! Programs check in and never check out!

It's so important that we say 'I can see his point of view and I can see his point of view'.