Below the 40th latitude there is no law; below the 50th no god; below the 60th no common sense and below the 70th no intelligence whatsoever.
The distinguishing mark of true adventures, is that it is often no fun at all while they are actually happening.
We are here to inscribe ourselves on the universe, and it is not inappropriate to remind ourselves of this when blank slates are given us.
An excess of reason is itself a form of madness
Very few people ever bother to find out what other people really think. They are willing to accept whatever they are told about anyone sufficiently distant.
Each of us have a gift, you see, given us freely by the universe. And each of us with every breath gives something back
None of us know our real names.
Historical analogy is the last refuge of people who can't grasp the current situation.
You can't choose your childhood, it's just what happens to you. But after that you choose. And that's really what (makes you).
Desire is life trying to continue to be life. All living things desire... Life is wanting.
First you fall in love with Antarctica, and then it breaks your heart.
It was not power that corrupted people, but fools who corrupted power.
Humans were still not only the cheapest robots around, but also, for many tasks, the only robots that could do the job. They were self-reproducing robots too. They showed up and worked generation after generation; give them 3000 calories a day and a few amenities, a little time off, and a strong jolt of fear, and you could work them at almost anything. Give them some ameliorative drugs and you had a working class, reified and coglike.
Life is insanely robust, though we can make species go extinct, and this is the bad thing. So I always make the point that you can't say, 'Is it too late?' That is the terrible question, because either answer promotes inaction. If it's too late, you don't need to act; if it's not too late, you don't need to act.
Money equals power; power makes the law; and law makes government.
The only part of an argument that really matters is what we think of the people arguing. X claims a, Y claims b. They make arguments to support their claims with any number of points. But when their listeners remember the discussion, what matters is simply that X believes a and Y believes b. People then form their judgment on what they think of X and Y.
Every moment an epiphany arrives and cleaves the mountain asunder
It makes us a thread in a tapestry that has unrolled for centuries before us, and will unroll for centuries after us. We're midway through the loom, that's the present, and what we do casts the thread in a particular direction, and the picture of the tapestry changes accordingly. When we begin to to try to make a picture pleasing to us and to those who come after, then perhaps you can say that we have seized history.
Without an observer at a twenty three degree angle to the light being reflected off a cloud of spherical droplets, there is no rainbow. The whole universe is like that. Our spirits stand at a twenty three degree angle to the universe. There is some new thing created at the contact of photon and retina, some space created between rock and mind.
The only part of an argument that really matters is what we think of the people arguing.
The command to be free is a double bind
It's too bad we only had the courage to live our lives fully in dreams.
Reincarnation is a story we tell; then in the end it's the story itself that is the reincarnation.
We should conceive of ourselves not as rulers of Earth, but as highly powerful, conscious stewards: The Earth is given to us in trust, and we can screw it up or make it work well and sustainably.
We’ll all say that. We’ll all go on and make the place safe. Roads, cities. New sky, new soil. Until it’s all some kind of Siberia or Northwest Territories, and Mars will be gone and we’ll be here, and we’ll wonder why we feel so empty. Why when we look at the land we can never see anything but our own faces.
