Wisdom

You sometimes feel that reading books is the only way you can think, as if the reading occupied one part of your brain and this allowed the other part to go free and become more active. You need that time to read in order to think. That’s all there is to it.

History was ignorant and had a mean streak, so it tended to repeat.

It is failure that guides evolution; perfection provides no incentive for improvement, and nothing is perfect.

We cannot turn the clock back nor can we undo the harm caused, but we have the power to determine the future and to ensure that what happened never happens again.

Deep down, creationists realize they will never win factual arguments with science. This is why they have construed their own science-like universe, known as Intelligent Design, and eagerly jump on every tidbit of information that seems to go their way.

The things white men failed to notice would fill the world they had ruined ten thousand times over.

My grandfather was Jacques Cousteau, a pioneer of ocean exploration and the co-inventor of scuba diving. Back in the 1940s when he tested out his invention which allowed humans to swim freely in the ocean with a portable air source for the first time in history, very little of the ocean had been explored let alone captured on film.

Check thyself before thy wreck thyself.

A wise man thus seeks not a straight path, but one that is the shortest or most convenient. The idea is to reach your goal comfortably and quickly rather than wasting your time in finding ‘Which is the straightest path?

For me poetry is an evasion of the real job of writing prose.

Reproach is infinite, and knows no endSo voluble a weapon is the tongue;Wounded, we wound; and neither side can failFor every man has equal strength to rail.

Anger dulls the sharpness of mind, hardens the softness of feelings, and replaces the sweetness of the world with bitterness.

Embrace your imperfections.Fancy your flaws.Flaunt your blemishes.Adore your birthmarks.Laugh off glitches.Discuss your setbacks.Don’t call your mistakes ‘Regrets’Call them ‘Lessons.

The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improve.

Steve needed to be careful here. He'd read mid-twentieth-century science fiction so he knew that once you started switching realities you ran into problems with nested levels of existence.

You shall create beauty not to excite the sensesbut to give sustenance to the soul.

Statistics is the grammar of science.

Goddamn it, do it yourself. You’re five hundred years old and you can’t use a telephone? Read the directions. What are you, an immortal idiot?

A man’s mind is hidden in his writings: criticism brings it to light.

I know it is the fashion to say that most of recorded history is lies anyway. I am willing to believe that history is for the most part inaccurate and biased, but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written.