Why, for example, should a group of simple, stable compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen struggle for billions of years to organize themselves into a professor of chemistry? What's the motive?

Definitions are the foundation of reason. You can't reason without them.

People say mental hospitals are for the patients, in fact they are to protect society from them. They are justified in doing that. Society has to do what is best for itself.

The real University... has no specific location. It owns no property, pays no salaries, and receives no material dues... The real University is a state of mind. It is that great heritage of rational thought that has been brought down to us through the centuries.

The Buddha takes no position on gods, he suggests they may exist or they may not, but either way you can live a moral life.

That's all the motorcycle is, a system of concepts worked out in steel.

You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge.