But then science is nothing but a series of questions that lead to more questions.

All holy piety in public, and all peeled grapes and self-indulgence in private.

What did they feed the lions and tigers with in the ark, sir?

Belief sloshes around in the firmament like lumps of clay spiralling into a potter's wheel. That's how gods get created, for example. They clearly must be created by their own believers, because a brief resume of the lives of most gods suggests that their origins certainly couldn't be divine. They tend to do exactly the things people would do if only they could, especially when it comes to nymphs, golden showers, and the smiting of your enemies.

Natural selection saw to it that professional heroes who at a crucial moment tended to ask themselves questions like 'What is my purpose in life?' very quickly lacked both.

You can't make people happy by law. If you said to a bunch of average people two hundred years ago "Would you be happy in a world where medical care is widely available, houses are clean, the world's music and sights and foods can be brought into your home at small cost, traveling even 100 miles is easy, childbirth is generally not fatal to mother or child, you don't have to die of dental abscesses and you don't have to do what the squire tells you" they'd think you were talking about the New Jerusalem and say "yes."

It takes forty men with their feet on the ground to keep one man with his head in the air.