"Ideas and opinions are not spontaneously 'born' in each individual brain: they have had a centre of formation, or irradiation, of dissemination, of persuasion-a group of men, or a single individual even, which has developed them and presented them in the political form of current reality."

"Some people experience rare moments when everything they believe is challenged. Or at least shaken up. Those moments stay with them. Surprise, real surprise, is an exotic thing not soon forgotten."

"Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell. Mercy does not mean not being cruel or sparing people revenge or punishment; it means a plain and positive thing like the sun, which one has either seen or not see."

".All the moralities tell them that it is the duty of women, and all the current sentimentalities that it is their nature, to live for others; to make complete abnegation of themselves, and to have no life but their affections. - The Subjection of Women."

"[S]cience has contributed a great deal to war and violence, and people well trained in science are sometimes not entirely rational and are even dogmatic. We have to find a way to teach reflectively, not just scientifically."

"The boundaries we erect to divide heaven from earth, mind from matter, real from unreal are mere conveniences. Having made the boundaries, we can unmake them just as easily."