Though knowledge itself increasingly ignores boundaries between fields, professors are apt to organize their pedagogy around the methods and history of their academic subculture rather than some coherent topic in the world.

If we are not to abandon values such as peace and equality, or our commitments to science and truth, then we must pry these values away from claims about our psychological makeup that are vulnerable to being proven false.

We instinctively fear snakes, but we appear not to be afraid of fast cars, which are a real danger now. This suggests our emotions were shaped by our evolutionary environment not the one we grew up in.

M.I.T. has a reputation for turning out Dilberts. They may be brilliant in what they do, but no one can understand what they say.

People are under the impression that dictionaries legislate language. What a dictionary does is keep track of usages over time.

Technology, ideology, and social and cultural changes periodically throw out new forms of violence for humanity to contend with.

Language mavens commonly confuse their own peeves with a worsening of the language.