Ecomodernists point out that organic farming, which needs far more land to produce a kilogram of food, is neither green nor sustainable.

— Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now

Instead of thanking the Lord for what we cannot fail to have, it would be far more appropriate at mealtime to ask forgiveness for the world’s inability to prevent famines.

— Martin Gardner, The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener

The hard problems around legacy modernization are not technical problems; they’re people problems. The technology is usually pretty straightforward.

— Marianne Bellotti, Kill It With Fire

Sensibilities toward violence have changed so much that religious people today compartmentalize their attitude to the Bible. They pay it lip service as a symbol of morality, while getting their actual morality from more modern principles.

— Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature

There is a great deal of historical evidence to suggest that a society which loses its identity with posterity and which loses its positive image of the future loses also its capacity to deal with present problems, and soon falls apart. . .

— Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems