One of the most difficult features of direct experience is that it is unfiltered by any theories or expectations. It's hard to observe without imposing a theory to explain what we're seeing, but the trouble with theories, as Einstein said, is that they explain not only what is observed, but what can be observed. We start to build expectations based on our theories.

Raising children is, in a sense, the reason the society exists in the first place. It's the most important thing that happens, and it's the culmination of all the tools and language and social structure that has evolved.

The belief that there are other life forms in the universe is a matter of faith. There is not a single shred of evidence for any other life forms, and in forty years of searching, none has been discovered. There is absolutely no evidentiary reason to maintain this belief.

I was certain that some people, whether by accident of birth or some pecularity of training, could tune in to another source of information and could know things about people we didn't think were possible to know.

Discovery is always rape of the natural world. Always.

Discovery, they believe, is inevitable. So they just try to do it first. That's the game in science.

There is always a cause for fear. The cause may change over time, but the fear is always with us.