Writing a book is a bit like going on location for a movie. You're absent from your life, your family, and your friends. You're psychologically gone, so you might as well be physically gone.

Safety is the last refuge of the scoundrel!

Writing a book is a bit like going on location for a movie. You're absent from your life, your family, and your friends. You're psychologically gone, so you might as well be physically gone.

The fact that the patients were complex human beings with a rich life beyond the hospital never really sank into the consciousness of the residents. Because they had no rich lives beyond the hospital, they assumed no one else did, either. In the end, what they lacked was not medical knowledge but ordinary life experience.

The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior, which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion.

The academic world was marching toward ever more specialized knowledge, expressed in ever more dense jargon.

In science, the old men are usually wrong. But in politics, the old men are wise, counsel caution, and in the end are often right.