Is he a dread genetic determinist, or a dread environmental determinist? He is neither, of course, for both these species of bogeyman are as mythical as werewolves. By increasing the information we have about the various causes of the constraints that limit our current opportunities, he has increased our powers to avoid what we want to avoid, prevent what we want to prevent. Knowledge of the roles of our genes, and the genes of the other species around us, is not the enemy of human freedom, but one of its best friends.

— Daniel C. Dennett, Freedom Evolves

…textbooks present lots of facts and techniques. But they do not enable anyone to become a scientist. You are inducted not by the laws and the theories but by the problems at the ends of the chapters.

— Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

There is a particular obsession with localization, as if knowing where something is in the brain is the key to explaining it.

— Paul Bloom, Against Empathy

Proclamations of officialness didn’t further the Net nearly so much as throwing technology out onto the Net to see what worked. And when something worked, it was adopted.

— Matthew Lyon and Katie Hafner, Where Wizards Stay Up Late

“You get paid for the seven and a half hours a day you put in here,” Kelly often told new Bell Labs employees in his speech to them on their first day, “but you get your raises and promotions on what you do in the other sixteen and a half hours.”

— Jon Gertner, The Idea Factory