Mother' is not an identity one can just try on for size.

Those who share my heroes are, in the deepest sense, of my own kind.

What is it precisely, that they are doing when they are doing science. Are they refining their instruments for observation or discovering new aspects of reality?

For the ancient Greeks, who lacked our social media, the only way to achieve mass duplication of the details of one's life in the apprehension of others was to do something wondrously worth the telling. Our wondrous technologies might just save us all the personal bother. Kleos is a tweak away.

That's one of the compensations for being mediocre. One doesn't have to worry about becoming mediocre.

Everyone loves a hero. What we differ on is the question of who the heroes are, because we differ over what matters. And who matters is a function of what matters. [If] what matters is intelligence, the people who matter are the intelligent, and the people who matter the most, the heroes, are the geniuses.

Everybody makes excuses for themselves they wouldn't be prepared to make for other people.