If every trace of any single religion died out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again.
There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense.
If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again.
Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
it turns out that human reason is rather feeble, easily overwhelmed by ancient instincts and lazy biases
It’s impossible to overstate the influence of Kahneman and Tversky. Like Darwin, they helped to dismantle a longstanding myth of human exceptionalism. Although we’d always seen ourselves as rational creatures—this was our Promethean gift—it turns out that human reason is rather feeble, easily overwhelmed by ancient instincts and lazy biases. The mind is a deeply flawed machine.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool.
I'm a non-Christian, just like most Christians.
When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is, and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life. Have fun, save a little money. That's a very limited life.
Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is everything around that you call life was made up by people who were no smarter than you. And you can change it. You can influence it. You can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
I shipped all that shit off to Stanford.
Steve Jobs recounting how he cleared out a room old Macintosh hardware when returned to Apple in 1997, adding "If you look backward in this business, you'll be crushed. You have to look forward."
For 37 years I've practiced 14 hours a day, and now they call me a genius.
