The X-Men comics use terms like “evolution,” “mutation,” and “genetic code,” purely to place themselves in what they conceive to be the literary genre of science. The part that scares me is wondering how many people, especially in the media, understand science only as a literary genre.

— Eliezer Yudkowsky, Map and Territory

Apple also sued Digital Research for “copying” their user interface in a product called GEM. Digital Research would probably have prevailed eventually, but would have gone bankrupt in the process because Apple had much deeper pockets. It’s somewhat ironic when you realize that the Apple user interface was substantially copied from the Xerox Alto.

— Jonathan E. Steinhart, The Secret Life of Programs

By wresting fire from the gods, we have only given our species the means to end its own existence, if not by poisoning our environment then by loosing nuclear weapons, nanotechnology, cyberterror, bioterror, artificial intelligence, and other existential threats upon the world…

— Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now

By 2008 the world’s population, all 6.7 billion of them, had an average income equivalent to that of Western Europe in 1964. And no, it’s not just because the rich are getting even richer (though of course they are, a topic we will examine in the next chapter). Extreme poverty is being eradicated, and the world is becoming middle class.

— Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now

There were three main new schools of thought: the Epicureans, the Stoics and the Sceptics. On the whole, if an Epicurean said one thing, a Stoic would say the opposite and a Sceptic would refuse to commit himself either way.

— Anthony Gottlieb, The Dream of Reason