Sad but true: individual intelligence probably peaked in the Upper Paleolithic, and we have been self-domesticated creatures ever since

The distinguishing mark of true adventures, is that it is often no fun at all while they are actually happening.

It was not power that corrupted people, but fools who corrupted power.

It would take 2,000 Vietnam Memorials to list the [Twentieth] century's war dead.

It makes us a thread in a tapestry that has unrolled for centuries before us, and will unroll for centuries after us. We're midway through the loom, that's the present, and what we do casts the thread in a particular direction, and the picture of the tapestry changes accordingly. When we begin to to try to make a picture pleasing to us and to those who come after, then perhaps you can say that we have seized history.

In a capitalist world, the word capital has taken on more and more uses. . . . human capital, for instance, which is what labor accumulates through education and work experience. Human capital differs from the classic kind in that you can't inherit it, and it can only be rented, not bought or sold.

A lot of scientists act on their beliefs and so do things that look crazy to the rest of us.