The gravest error a thinking person can make is to believe that one particular version of history is absolute fact. History is recorded by a series of observers, none of whom is impartial. The facts are distorted by sheer passage of time and thousands of years of humanity's dark ages, deliberate misrepresentations by religious sects, and the inevitable corruption that comes from an accumulation of careless mistakes. The wise person, then, views history as a set of lessons to be learned, choices and ramifications to be considered and discussed, and mistakes that should never again be made.

We are generalists. You can't draw neat lines around planet-wide problems. Planetology is a cut-and-fit science.

A killer with the manners of a rabbit - this is the most dangerous kind.

One of the best things to come out of the home computer revolution could be the general and widespread understanding of how severely limited logic really is.

The mind can go either direction under stress—toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyperconsciousness at the positive end. The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training.

The surest way to keep a secret is to make people believe they already know the answer.

Life is a mask through which the universe expresses itself.