The expression of divinity is in variety.

I'm not sure a world run by women would be any better. They're human beings!

Nothing limits intelligence more than ignorance; nothing fosters ignorance more than one's own opinions; nothing strengthens opinions more than refusing to look at reality.

It may be important to write a book that doesn't come up to what I would like to have rather than to write no book at all.

Conflict acting on intelligence creates imagination. Faced with conflict, creatures are forced to imagine what will happen, where the next threat will come from. If there has never been conflict, imagination never develops. Wits arise in answer to danger, to pain, to tragedy. No one ever got smarter eating easy apples.

Other people's risks are statistical. When it's your risk, your own child, it isn't statistical anymore.

Mankind accepts good fortune as his due, but when bad occurs, he thinks it was aimed at him, done to him, a hex, a curse, a punishment by his deity for some transgression, as though his god were a petty storekeeper, counting up the day's receipts.