Unable to attribute misfortune to chance, unable to accept their ultimate insignificance within the greater scheme, the people looked for monsters in their midst.

The mind is not a machine, it is an idea. And the Idea resists all attempts to control it.

Thought, like any parasite, cannot exist without a compliant host.

Superstition is the need to view the world in terms of simple cause and effect.

I try not to be surprised. Surprise is the public face of a mind that has been closed.

... from our vantage point it is now clear that the only thing the population had to fear was fear itself.

I respond well to what I read of Immanuel Kants idea that the world as we see it is absolutely a function of the way our brain works. In the modern parlance, its an evolved machine that we carry with us.