On Tenure
"The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root it doesn't need its brain anymore so it eats it. It's rather like getting tenure."
--Neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinas, as elaborated by Daniel C. Dennett in "Consciousness Explained"
On Gifted Children
"He never pays attention, he always knows the answer, and he can never tell you how he knows. We can't keep thrashing him. He is a bad example to the other pupils. There's no educating a smart boy."
--Terry Pratchett, "Thief of Time"
On Intelligence
"I believe that mobility, acute vision and the ability to carry out survival-related tasks in a dynamic environment provide a necessary basis for the development of true intelligence." (emphasis mine; see next quote)
--Rodney Brooks, "Intelligence Without Representation", AIJ 1991
On Acute Vision "Helen Adams Keller ... was a woman of luminous intelligence, high ambition and great accomplishment."
--Helen Keller, www.hki.org, 10/04
On Democracy
"I had always thought that in a democracy---and again, I don't know; I've only lived in this country..."
--Jon Stewart, Crossfire, 10/04
On Iraq
"Facts in Iraq have an anti-Bush agenda."
--Rob Corddry, The Daily Show, 5/3/04
(Unintentionally) On Bush
"We enter a perilous country when we decide that because we mean well, or because we are largely good, that we are thus allowed to do something we know is wrong."
--The War of the Flowers, by Tad Williams
On the Division of Labor
"It must have been like that in the old days--the men sitting around bragging about some gazelle they speared three weeks ago while the women gathered food, made clothes, cooked, took care of the children."
--Otherland Volume One: City of Golden Shadow, by Tad Williams
On Shock
"When somebody is a little bit wrong--say, when a waiter puts nonfat milk in your espresso macchiato, instead of lowfat milk--it is often quite easy to explain to them how and why they are wrong. But if somebody is surpassingly wrong--say, when a waiter bites your nose instead of taking your order--you can often be so surprised that you are unable to say anything at all. Paralyzed by how wrong the waiter is, your mouth would hang slightly open and your eyes would blink over and over, but you would be unable to say a word. This is what the Baudelaire children did."
--The Reptile Room, by Lemony Snicket