According to this theory then, senile decay is simply a by-product of the accumulation in the gene pool of late-acting lethal and semi-lethal genes, which have been allowed to slip through the net of natural selection simply because they are late-acting.

— Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

…much of programming is now taught as if it’s just the process of gluing together functions in libraries.

— Jonathan E. Steinhart, The Secret Life of Programs

students who receive honors grades in college-level physics courses are frequently unable to solve basic problems and questions encountered in a form slightly different from that on which they have been formally instructed and tested.

— Howard Gardner, The Unschooled Mind

…poetic genius comes from divinely inspired madness rather than from knowledge…

— Philosophy Now, Anja Publications

if truth is our aim, we must be resigned to achieving it to a very limited extent, and without certainty. To redefine the aim so that its achievement is largely guaranteed, through various forms of reductionism, relativism, or historicism, is a form of cognitive wish-fulfillment. Philosophy cannot take refuge in reduced ambitions. It is after eternal and nonlocal truth, even though we know that is not what we are going to get.

— Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere