I can usually find my own way out of whatever dicey literary or linguistic situations I wander into, but I have to work much harder at the science.

Take away the ability of an intelligent, principled, hard-working mind to get it wrong, and you take away the whole thing.

doubt is a skill. credulity ,by contrast, appears to be something very like an instinct

wrongness always seems to come at us from left field - that is, from outside ourselves. But the reality could hardly be more different. Error is the ultimate inside job. Yes, the world can be profoundly confusing; and yes, other people can mislead or deceive you. In the end, though, nobody but you can choose to believe your own beliefs.

The miracle of your mind isn't that you can see the world as it is. It's that you can see the world as it isn't.

I can usually find my own way out of whatever dicey literary or linguistic situations I wander into, but I have to work much harder at the science.

We need to learn to love the flawed, imperfect things that we create, and to forgive ourselves for creating them. Regret doesen't remind us what we did badly, it reminds us what we know we could do better.