Evolution is adventitious and not foresighted. Only through the deaths of an immense number of slightly maladapted organisms are we, brains and all, here today.

Those at too great a distance may, I am well are, mistake ignorance for perspective.

Significant change might require those who are now high in the hierarchy to move downward many steps. This seems to them undesirable and is resisted.

And reading itself is an amazing activity: You glance at a thin, flat object made from a tree...and the voice of the author begins to speak inside your head. (Hello!)

the future belongs to those societies that treat new ideas as delicate, fragile and immensely valuable pathways to the future.

Natural selection has served as a kind of intellectual sieve, producing brains and intelligences increasingly competent to deal with the laws of nature.

Our difficulties in understanding or effectuatingcommunication with other animals may arise from our reluctance to grasp unfamiliar ways of dealing with the world.

Do dogs feel for humans something akin to religious ecstasy? What other strong or subtle emotions are felt by animals that do not communicate with us?

Lashley also reported no apparent change in the general behavior of a rat when significant fractions—say 10 percent—of its brain were removed. But no one asked the rat of its opinion.

Once intelligent beings achieve technology and the capacity for self-destruction of their species, the selective advantage of intelligence becomes more uncertain.

The price we pay for the anticipation of our future is anxiety about it.

If everyone takes one action for peace every day, our future generations will be able to enjoy peace.

I gave her love she gave me words to write

A husband is what is left of a lover after the nerve has been extracted.

Oh I love gadgets and I pride myself on keeping at the cutting edge of technology.

What is necessary is never unwise.

I never had a typewriter. I never had any machines.

If Christ can die in a barn, I think the death of a human in a van is not so bad.

I consider anybody a twerp who hasn't read the greatest American short story, which is 'Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,' by Ambrose Bierce.

The hardest of all is learning to be a well of affection, and not a fountain, to show them that we love them, not when we feel like it, but when they do.