We turn to quantities when we can't compare the qualities of things.

But the big feature of human-level intelligence is not what it does when it is works but what it does when it's stuck.

Imagine what it would be like if TV actually were good. It would be the end of everything we know.

What would a Martian visitor think to see a human being laugh? It must look truly horrible: the sight of furious gestures, flailing limbs, and thorax heaving in frenzied contortions.

We rarely recognize how wonderful it is that a person can traverse an entire lifetime without making a single really serious mistake — like putting a fork in one's eye or using a window instead of a door.

If we understood something just one way, we would not understand it at all.

The brain happens to be a meat machine.