Boys," said Hermione Granger, "should not be allowed to love girls without asking them first! This is true in a number of ways and especially when it comes to gluing people to the ceiling!

I ask the fundamental question of rationality: Why do you believe what you believe? What do you think you know and how do you think you know it?

I'm wondering if there's a spell to make lightning flash in the background whenever I make an ominous resolution.

Our coherent extrapolated volition is our wish if we knew more, thought faster, were more the people we wished we were, had grown up farther together; where the extrapolation converges rather than diverges, where our wishes cohere rather than interfere; extrapolated as we wish that extrapolated, interpreted as we wish that interpreted.

There's something in science like the shine of the Patronus Charm, driving back all sorts of darkness and madness.

He'd met other prodigies in mathematical competitions. In fact he'd been thoroughly trounced by competitors who probably spent literally all day practising maths problems and who'd never read a science-fiction book and who would burn out completely before puberty and never amount to anything in their future lives because they'd just practised known techniques instead of learning to think creatively.

You are personally responsible for becoming more ethical than the society you grew up in.