Those at too great a distance may, I am well are, mistake ignorance for perspective.

Significant change might require those who are now high in the hierarchy to move downward many steps. This seems to them undesirable and is resisted.

And reading itself is an amazing activity: You glance at a thin, flat object made from a tree...and the voice of the author begins to speak inside your head. (Hello!)

the future belongs to those societies that treat new ideas as delicate, fragile and immensely valuable pathways to the future.

Natural selection has served as a kind of intellectual sieve, producing brains and intelligences increasingly competent to deal with the laws of nature.

Our difficulties in understanding or effectuatingcommunication with other animals may arise from our reluctance to grasp unfamiliar ways of dealing with the world.

Do dogs feel for humans something akin to religious ecstasy? What other strong or subtle emotions are felt by animals that do not communicate with us?

Evolution is adventitious and not foresighted. Only through the deaths of an immense number of slightly maladapted organisms are we, brains and all, here today.

Lashley also reported no apparent change in the general behavior of a rat when significant fractions—say 10 percent—of its brain were removed. But no one asked the rat of its opinion.

Once intelligent beings achieve technology and the capacity for self-destruction of their species, the selective advantage of intelligence becomes more uncertain.

The price we pay for the anticipation of our future is anxiety about it.

I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.

Some people aren't meant to stay in your life. But, that doesn't mean you can't carry a piece of them in your heart.

The reward of the good man is to be allowed to worship in truth.

The team takes on the identity of its top payers... I don't want to take anything away from the Capitals offensively.

There was a time when television was sort of frowned upon among people who wanted to be serious artists. John Travolta kind of exploded that. He was one of the actors who made that go away.

When one thing ends, you put it away and start from scratch on the next thing.

I'm terrified of saying the wrong thing on stage with bell hooks.

When Luis Marden dropped in by air from Säo Paulo, he demanded gauchos.

There are people have grown up with implicit trust. Law enforcement, you name it. It's all gone. There's doubt about everything now. And this is not accidental.

I don't like bonuses for public services employees who do great jobs, like prosecutors or judges.