Everything we care about lies somewhere in the middle, where pattern and randomness interlace.

We choose mania over boredom every time.

Geniuses of certain kinds - mathematicians, chess players, computer programmers - seem, if not mad, at least lacking in the social skills most easily identified with sanity.

Information is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom.

The history of life is written in terms of negative entropy.

The alternative to doubt is authority, against which science had fought for centuries.

When the Lilliputians first saw Gulliver's watch, that "wonderful kind of engine...a globe, half silver and half of some transparent metal," they identified it immediately as the god he worshiped. After all, "he seldom did anything without consulting it: he called it his oracle, and said it pointed out the time for every action in his life." To Jonathan Swift in 1726 that was worth a bit of satire. Modernity was under way. We're all Gullivers now. Or are we Yahoos?