Prediction, not narration, is the real test of our understanding of the world.

What I learned on my own I still remember

If something is going on, I hear about it. I like to talk to people, I socialise. Television is a waste of time. Human contact is what matters.

Scepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be sceptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.

An elephant is vastly more efficient, metabolically, than a mouse. It's the same for a megacity as opposed to a village. But an elephant can break a leg very easily, whereas you can toss a mouse out of a window and it'll be fine. Size makes you fragile.

The twentieth century was the bankruptcy of the social utopia; the twenty-first will be that of the technological one.

The classical man's worst fear was inglorious death; the modern man's worst fear is just death