…people in my line of work always say that we want to promote “critical thinking”—but really we want our students to think critically only about what they’ve learned at home and in church, not about what they learn from us.

— Alan Jacobs, How to Think

Very often, and even most often, choice is utterly and stubbornly opposed to reason. And do you know that that too is profitable? Sometimes even praiseworthy.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground

When you combine self-interest and sociality with impartiality—the interchangeability of perspectives—you get the core of morality.

— Steven Pinker, Rationality

In the computer industry, it takes roughly fifteen years, on the average, from the conception of an idea to its entering the marketplace.

— Michio Kaku, Visions

…at some point something must have come from nothing…

— Jostein Gaarder, Sophie’s World