Caring is irrelevant. Desire to do good is irrelevant. All that counts is knowledge and results

False fears are a plague, a modern plague!

In other centuries, human beings wanted to be saved, or improved, or freed, or educated. But in our century, they want to be entertained. The great fear is not of disease or death, but of boredom. A sense of time on our hands, a sense of nothing to do. A sense that we are not amused.

But complex animals had obtained their adaptive flexibility at some cost--they had traded one dependency for another. It was no longer necessary to change their bodies to adapt, because now their adaptation was behavior, socially determined. That behavior required learning. In a sense, among higher animals adaptive fitness was no longer transmitted to the next generation by DNA at all. It was now carried by teaching.

Nobody smart knows what they want to do until they get into their twenties or thirties.

It takes enormous effort to avoid all theories and just see.

A man can see by starlight, if he takes the time.