To make discoveries in science, both small and important, you must be an expert on the topic addressed. To be an expert innovator requires commitment. Commitment to a subject implies sustained hard work.

— Edward O. Wilson, Letters to a Young Scientist

The curse of modernity is that we are increasingly populated by a class of people who are better at explaining than understanding…

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game

That Douglass and King could approvingly quote Jefferson, himself a hypocritical and in some ways dishonorable man, does not compromise the rationality of their arguments but reinforces it. We should care about people’s virtue when considering them as friends, but not when considering the ideas they voice. Ideas are true or false, consistent or contradictory, conducive to human welfare or not, regardless of who thinks them.

— Steven Pinker, Rationality

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken. OLIVER CROMWELL [1650]

— Frederick P. Jr. Brooks, The Design of Design

A major breakthrough of the Scientific Revolution—perhaps its biggest breakthrough—was to refute the intuition that the universe is saturated with purpose.

— Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now