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.

Radar is too long in the tooth for fine detail.

If the rest of your brain were conscious, it would probably regard you as the pointy-haired boss from Dilbert

What's the survival value of obsessing on a sunset?

Property damage is so much easier to live with than murder.

Brains are survival engines, not truth detectors.

After four thousand years we can’t even prove that reality exists beyond the mind of the first-person dreamer.

You can’t turn a sunset into a string of grunts without losing something.

Thanks to a vampire and a boatload of freaks and an invading alien horde, I’m Human again.

No human being can be so honest as to become completely false.

Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful.

Ah, lips that say one thing, while the heart thinks another.

Steel is not forged in a comfortable place.

A leader's most important decisions are about people. Who do you put in which jobs? How long do you leave them in a job?

It is the idea that all order must be explained by a functioning mind at the helm, not its denial, that has the closet affinity to the religious instinct.

My black-and-white work is more of a celebration and the color work became more of a critique of society.

There's no way in hell I could have achieved what I have without being a good student and listening to the wisdom of others

Openness about death has led to greater care about all aspects of dying.

It's still a memory worth having, even if it's not exactly what you imagined.