There is no such thing as philosophy-free science, just science that has been conducted without any consideration of its underlying philosophical assumptions.

The theoretical fruits of deliberate oversimplification through idealization are not to be denied... Reality in all its messy particularity is too complicated to theorize about, taken straight. The issue is, rather (since every idealization is a strategic choice), which idealizations might really shed some light... which will just land us... diverting fairy tales.

True, you don't have to be religious to be crazy, but it helps.

It is not so much that we, using our brains, spin our yarns, as that our brains, using yarns, spin us.

Philosophers' Syndrome: mistaking a failure of the imagination for an insight into necessity.

Minds are in limited supply, and each mind has a limited capacity for memes, and hence there is considerable competition among memes for entry in as many minds as possible.

Cults and prophets proclaiming the imminent end of the world have been with us for several millennia, and it has been another sour sort of fun to ridicule them the morning after, when they discover that their calculations were a little off. But, just as with Marxists, there are some among them who are working hard to "hasten the inevitable," not merely anticipating the End Days with joy in their hearts, but taking political action to bring about the conditions they think are the prerequisites for that occasion.