Stars, everywhere. So many stars that I could not for the life me understand how the sky could contain them all yet be so black.

If believing absurd falsehoods increase the odds of getting laid or avoiding predators, your brain will believe those falsehoods with all its metaphorical little heart.

Computers bootstrap their own offspring, grow so wise and incomprehensible that their communiqués assume the hallmarks of dementia: unfocused and irrelevant to the barely-intelligent creatures left behind. And when your surpassing creations find the answers you asked for, you can't understand their analysis and you can't verify their answers. You have to take their word on faith.

Radar is too long in the tooth for fine detail.

How do you say 'We come in peace' when the very words are an act of war?

Science is so powerful that it drags us kicking and screaming towards the truth despite our best efforts to avoid it.

There's no such things as survival of the fittest. Survival of the most adequate, maybe. It doesn't matter whether a solution's optimal. All that matters is whether it beats the alternative.