The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.

This sort of information gathering is precisely what we call play. And the important function of play is thus revealed: it permits us to gain, without any particular future application in mind, a holistic understanding of the world, which is both a complement of and a preparation for later analytical activities.

Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.

Russell commented that the development of such gifted individuals (referring to polymaths) required a childhood period in which there was little or no pressure for conformity, a time in which the child could develop and pursue his or her own interests no matter how unusual or bizarre.

I think the discomfort that some people feel in going to the monkey cages at the zoo is a warning sign.

The fossil record implies trial and error, the inability to anticipate the future, features inconsistent with a Great Designer (though not a Designer of a more remote and indirect temperament.)

The secrets of evolution, are time and death. There's an unbroken thread that stretches from those first cells to us.

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

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.