the mind is a neural computer

A...reason we are so-so scientists is that our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth. Sometimes truth is adaptive, but sometimes it is not.

I think moralistic science is bad for morals and bad for science.

A bumper sticker from the 1970s read, “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.

The supposedly immaterial soul, we now know, can be bisected with a knife, altered by chemicals, started or stopped by electricity, and extinguished by a sharp blow or by insufficient oxygen.

Plato said that we are trapped inside a cave and know the world only through the shadows it casts on the wall. The skull is our cave, and mental representations are the shadows.

The mind is not designed to grasp the laws of probability, even though the laws rule the universe.

We should expose whatever ends are harmful and whatever ideas are false, and not confuse the two.

A design can excel at one challenge only by compromising at others.

The typical imperative from biology is not "Thou shalt..., " but "If ... then ... else.

The three-part whats to winning: 1. What you have. 2. What you need.3. What you believe.

It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.

It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles.

Four years ago, who ever thought this would have happened?

In different lifetimes, you incarnate in different dimensional planes, let alone in different universes in the physical universe.

success is 99% failure

Look, I went into journalism to do journalism, not advertising.

All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.

I'm not at Manchester United to keep everyone happy.

I'll take a quiet life, A handshake of carbon monoxide. No alarms and no surprises...