False fears are a plague, a modern plague!

You can’t get decent Mexican food in DC.

Nobody dares to solve the problems-because the solution might contradict your philosophy, and for most people clinging to beliefs is more important than succeeding in the world.

Books aren’t written, they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it…

This may be why Einstein once said; “Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth. What humanity owes to personalities like Buddha, Moses...

I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2....

[..]Although personally, I think cyberspace means the end of our species.”Yes? Why is that?”Because it means the end of innovation,” Malcolm said. “This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every...

Having wallowed in a delightful orgy of anti-French sentiment, having deplored and applauded the villains themselves, having relished the foibles of bankers, railwaymen, diplomats, and police, the public was now ready to see its faith...

Sometimes I think everyone’s an attorney.

… we have created a man with not one brain but two. … This new brain is intended to control the biological brain. … The patient’s biological brain is the peripheral terminal — the only...

You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There’s been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later...

There are lots of trips out there. It’s even possible to become a conference groupie, going from one seminar to another and being a Beautiful Evolved Human Being until you start making the people around...

All your life, other people will try to take your accomplishments away from you. Don’t you take it away from yourself.

Geniuses never pay attention.

Absence of proof is not proof of absence

Praise not the day until evening has come, a woman until she is burnt, a sword until it is tried, a maiden until she is married, ice until it has been crossed, beer until it...

In any case, this was a deep human prejudice. Human beings to find a central command in any organization. States had governments. Corporations had CEOs. Schools had principals. Armies had generals. Human beings tended to...

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and...

They are not free at all. They are essentially our prisoners.

Skeptical scientists often point out, as Carl Sagan has, that the wonders of real science far surpass the supposed wonders of fringe science. I think it is possible to invert that idea, and to say...

Science is as corruptible a human activity as any other.

I suspect that scientists are driven by the sense that the world out there – reality – contains a hidden order, and the scientist is trying to elucidate the hidden order in our reality. And...

It’s better to die laughing than to live each moment in fear.

Raising children is, in a sense, the reason the society exists in the first place. It’s the most important thing that happens, and it’s the culmination of all the tools and language and social structure...

Increasingly, the mathematics will demand the courage to face its implications.