The person and society are yoked, like mind and body. Arguing which is more important is like debating whether oxygen or hydrogen is the more essential property of water.

The difference between transformation by accident and transformation by a system is like the difference between lightning and a lamp. Both give illumination, but one is dangerous and unreliable, while the other is relatively safe, directed, available.

...As Thomas Kuhn pointed out in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, new scientific theories in any field are regarded with skepticism because scientists become attached to the old perspective earlier in their careers.

Real progress in understanding nature is rarely incremental. All important advances are sudden intuitions, new principles, new ways of seeing.

Real progress in understanding nature is rarely incremental. All important advances are sudden intuitions, new principles, new ways of seeing. We have not fully recognized this process of leaping ahead, however, in part because textbooks tend to tame revolutions...They describe the advances as if they had been logical in their day, not all shocking.

If we are to find our way across troubled waters, we are better served by the company of those who have built bridges, who have moved beyond despair and inertia.

Of all the self-fulfilling prophecies in our culture, the assumption that aging means decline and poor health is probably the deadliest.