This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: You hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the speech from the screams.

People aren't rational. We're not thinking machines, we're - we're feeling machines that happen to think.

There's no such things as survival of the fittest. Survival of the most adequate, maybe. It doesn't matter whether a solution's optimal. All that matters is whether it beats the alternative.

The most altruistic and sustainable philosophies fail before the brute brain stem imperative of self-interest.

But when the flash flood crosses your path, when the lion leaps at you from the grasses, advanced self-awareness is an unaffordable indulgence. The brain stem does its best.

Science is so powerful that it drags us kicking and screaming towards the truth despite our best efforts to avoid it.

I am the bridge between the bleeding edge and the dead center. I stand between the Wizard of Oz and the man behind the curtain. I am the curtain.

What's the difference between being dead, and just not knowing you're alive?

Radar is too long in the tooth for fine detail.

But pattern-matching doesn't equal comprehension.

I really wanted to talk to her. I just couldn't find an algorithm that fit.

Walking is a virtue, tourism is a deadly sin.

Let a man set his heart only on doing the will of God and he is instantly free. No one can hinder him.

The real test of a bridge player isn’t in keeping out of trouble, but in escaping once he’s in.

You and your sins must separate, or you and your God will never come together.

Everything comes to him who waits -- if he waits till it comes.

Genius is an overused word. The world has known only about a half dozen geniuses. I got only fairly near.

Worm theology is too high for me.

The fire that warms us can also consume us; it is not the fault of the fire.

Never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never saw even an elemental trait of painting or sculpture.