The really clever people now want to be lawyers or journalists.
Kissing could have begun as a way of sniffing out who's who. From a whiff to a kiss was just a short trip across the face.
Woodworking requires a completely different kind of thinking and problem-solving ability than writing. With writing, you take a set of facts and ideas, and you reason your way forward to a story that pulls them together. With woodworking, you start with an end product in mind, and reason your way backward to the raw wood.
Someday in the distant cyborg future, when our internal and external memories fully merge, we may come to possess infinite knowledge. But that's not the same thing as wisdom.
Invented languages have often been created in tandem with entire invented universes, and most conlangers come to their craft by way of fantasy and science fiction.
I have never been particularly good with languages. Despite a dozen years of Hebrew school and a lifetime of praying in the language, I'm ashamed to admit that I still can't read an Israeli newspaper. Besides English, the only language I speak with any degree of fluency is Spanish.
Just as we accumulate memories of facts by integrating them into a network, we accumulate life experiences by integrating them into a web of other chronological memories. The denser the web, the denser the experience of time.
Some people said I was annoying, but now look how far we've come.
I'm tired of being responsible for 203 lives, and I'm tired of deciding which mission is too risky and which isn't, and who's going on the landing party and who doesn't. . . and who lives, and who dies.
. . . one should be gentle with the ignorant, for they are the chosen of God.
Disgraces are like cherries, one drawes another. [Disgraces are like cherries, one draws another. ]