The best way of increasing the [average] intelligence of scientists would be to reduce their number.
Having your husband at a party is like adding anchovies to a salad. I love anchovies, but you can't taste anything else.
Everyone loves a hero. What we differ on is the question of who the heroes are, because we differ over what matters. And who matters is a function of what matters. [If] what matters is intelligence, the people who matter are the intelligent, and the people who matter the most, the heroes, are the geniuses.
Those who share my heroes are, in the deepest sense, of my own kind.
To matter, to mind. . . . What we mind is in our power, but whether we matter may not be - and there's the tragedy. . . . Can anyone truthfully say, I don't matter and I don't mind?
Plato dramatically puts the detachment of the philosopher from his time this way: to philosophize is to prepare to die.
Mother' is not an identity one can just try on for size.
Corruption hates what is not corrupt.
It's very hard to write about that which is always beautiful and pleasant and good. You don't get anywhere with it. There's no friction in it. There's no trouble. You have to have trouble. Somebody's got to get in trouble, or no one wants to read it.
I feel like Bill Walton - old and shitty.
I have just been given a very engaging Persian kitten. . . and his opinion is that I have been given to him.