…our consciousness weaves a route at random along the ever-branching evolutionary pathway of the cosmos, so it is we, rather than God, who are playing dice.

— Paul Davies, Other Worlds

One big problem with our base-ten system of numbers is that it doesn’t have any relevance for cartoon characters. Most cartoon characters have only four fingers on each hand (or paw), so they prefer a number system that’s based on eight.

— Charles Petzold, Code

What if there is no way the world should be and no way the world shouldn’t be? What if the world just shows up the way the world shows up? What if the great opportunity of life isn’t in trying to get the world to be a certain way, but rather in learning from whatever the world gives us? What if curiosity and learning are really the big game, not being right about how things should be?

— Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Klemp, The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership

You can tell who the real artists are not only by their prodigious output but also by their stack of failed experiments, their overflowing bookcases, and the way their eyes get all crazy when they talk about the minutia of their avocation.

— Brennen Reece, Productivity for the Depressive Polymath

“A great truth,” Bohr liked to say, “is a truth whose opposite is also a great truth.”

— Martin Gardner, The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener