It sometimes seems as if curbing entropy is our quixotic purpose in this universe.

I can't remember the last book that taught me so much, and so well, about what it means to be human.

Google is where we go for answers. People used to go elsewhere or, more likely, stagger along not knowing.

The basic idea of Western science is that you don't have to take into account the falling of a leaf on some planet in another galaxy when you're trying to account for the motion of a billiard ball on a pool table on earth. Very small influences can be neglected. There's a convergence in the way things work, and arbitrarily small influences don't blow up to have arbitrarily large effects.

The Internet is like a town that leaves its streets unmarked on the principle that people who don't already know don't belong

We choose mania over boredom every time.

Every new medium transforms the nature of human thought. In the long run, history is the story of information becoming aware of itself.