42 Quotes by Matthew Stewart

Tyranny happens when a society turns against itself, with one part usurping the power of [the] whole and applying it to the exploitation of the rest. Corruption, or misdirection of public effort for private gain, is one common feature of tyranny.... Government through fear is another common feature of tyranny, since it it through fear that one part of society can induce the other to betray its own interests.

We're just one rock surrounded by this immense universe.

We are all equal not because we partake in some peculiar nature or because we share in the same credo of unreasoned beliefs, but because we take it that no thinking being is incapable of seeing reason.

Sir Isaac Newton gave the extraterrestrials their biggest shot in the arm when he embraced the infinite universe as the basis for his hugely influential system of physics. Even so, the aliens of the early modern period remained creatures of philosophy rather than science.

Nature's God really descends from an ancient Greek tradition that was passed along to the early modern philosophers. And these were quite radical thinkers who were really challenging the ways of thinking of their time and the established religion.

Nobody is allowed to do any production while they have a school commitment.

One of the distinguishing features of anything that aspires to the name of science is the reproducibility of experimental results.

I would eventually leave the business in 1999 to work full-time as a writer, but during the previous decade, I would advise French businessmen on how to succeed in Germany; tell Americans what to do in Eastern Europe; show the Spanish how to become more like the Americans. I spent one particularly haunting year advising bankers in Mexico.

I don't have an M.B.A. I have a doctoral degree in philosophy - nineteenth-century German philosophy, to be precise.