The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
Extrapolating from the statistical growth of the legal profession, by the year 2035 every single person in the United States will be a lawyer, including newborn infants.
We are one of only three species on our planet that can claim to be self-aware, yet self-delusion may be a more significant characteristic of our kind.
In truth, one of our company, the solemn warrior Ecthgow, was so demented from liquor that he was drunk while still upon his horse, and he fell attempting to dismount. Now the horse kicked him in the head, and I feared for his safety, but Ecthgow laughed and kicked the horse back.
Reality is always greater - much greater - than what we know, than whatever we can say about it.
Cure the symptoms, cure the disease.
Sneaking up on it sometimes helps: I've found I can be very productive for an hour before dinner, because there obviously isn't enough time to really do anything, so I can tell myself I'm just screwing around.
Human intelligence was more trouble than it was worth. It was more destructive than creative, more confusing than revealing, more discouraging than satisfying, more spiteful than charitable.
Scientific research was much like prospecting: you went out and you hunted, armed with your maps and instruments, but in the ened your preparations did not matter, or even your intuition. You needed your luck, and whatever benefits accrued to the diligent, through sheer, grinding hard work.
In science, the old men are usually wrong. But in politics, the old men are wise, counsel caution, and in the end are often right.
This novel is fiction, except for the parts that aren't.
As the practical value of altering consciousness becomes recognized, procedures to effect these alterations will become increasingly ordinary and unremarkable. The whole concept of changing states of consciousness will cease to have a threatening or exotic aspect.
I think every writer should have tattooed backwards on his forehead, like ambulance on ambulances, the words 'everybody needs an editor.
Friendships are nice. So is competence.
They always say they didn't. I never heard of one who said, 'You know, I deserve this.' Never happens.
Often I feel I go to some distant region of the world to be reminded of who I really am.
If true computer music were ever written, it would only be listened to by other computers.
Safety is the last refuge of the scoundrel!
Science is the business of generating testable hypotheses.
I hadn't traveled with the intention of learning about anything except myself. And the real point of all this travel was not what I had come to believe or disbelieve about the wider world, but what I had learned about myself.
Nobody wants to feel they're not a rebel.
Nobody smart knows what they want to do until they get into their twenties or thirties.
For our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behavior. We innovate new behavior to adapt.
Science is a kind of glorified tailoring enterprise, a method for taking measurements that describe something ? reality ? that may not be understood at all.
Expectation works in mysterious ways---and totally unconsciously.
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