Life is so fluid that one can only hope to capture the living moment, to capture it alive and fresh. . . without destroying that moment.
Solving a problem in a hundred years is, practically speaking, the same as not solving it at all.
All our behaviours are a result of neurophysiological activity in the brain. There is no reason to believe there is any magic going on.
Being smarter gives you a tailwind throughout life. People who are more intelligent earn more, live longer, get divorced less, are less likely to get addicted to alcohol and tobacco, and their children live longer.
I would argue that nothing gives life more purpose than the realization that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift.
When it comes to explaining human thought and behavior, the possibility that heredity plays any role at all still has the power to shock. To acknowledge human nature, many think, is to endorse racism, sexism, war, greed, genocide, nihilism, reactionary politics, and neglect of children and the disadvantaged. Any claim that the mind has an innate organization strikes people not as a hypothesis that might be incorrect but as a thought it is immoral to think.
In many Muslim countries, witchcraft is not only on the books as a crime, but is commonly prosecuted. In 2009, for example, Saudi Arabia convicted a man for carrying a phone booklet with characters in an alphabet from his native Eritrea, which the police interpreted as occult symbols. He was lashed three hundred times and imprisoned for more than three years.
However long the moon disappears, someday it must shine again.
I'm like President Bush. You may not like me, you may not respect me, but you voted me in.
Of all political sacred-cows, education is the most sacred and the most cow-like.
If all else fails, we will simply have to drug our attendants, overpower the guards, raise the oppressed peasants to arms, and take over the government.