If social stability goes pear-shaped, you have a choice between anarchy and dictatorship. Most people will opt for more security, even if they have to give up some personal freedom.

Science is a tool, and we invent tools to do things we want. It's a question of how those tools are used by people.

Don't be married to a line or verse if it can't rhyme, fit the meter, or doesn't fit the outline.

Some days I do appreciate things more, eggs, flowers, but then I decide I'm only having an attack of sentimentality, my brain going pastel Technicolor, like a beautiful-sunset greeting cards they used to make so many of in California. High-gloss hearts. The danger is grayout.

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy - which many believe goes hand in hand with it - will be dead as well.

Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress.

You say, The sensed absence of God and the sensed presence amount to much the same thing, only in reverse.