“As every scuba diver knows, panic is your worst enemy: when it hits, your mind starts to thrash and you are likely to do something really stupid and self-destructive.”

We live in a world that is subjectively open. And we are designed by evolution to be “informavores”, epistemically hungry seekers of information, in an endless quest to improve our purchase on the world, the better to make decisions about our subjectively open future.

You can’t get through seminary and come out believing in God!

There are no forces on this planet more dangerous to all of us than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism.

The best thing about saying thank goodness in place of thank God this that here really are lots of ways of repaying your debt of goodness – by setting to create more of it, for the benefit of those to come.

Sometimes you don’t just want to risk making mistakes; you actually want to make them – if only to give you something clear and detailed to fix.

Most people in the West who say they believe in God actually believe in belief in God.

YES we have a soul but it’s made of lots of tiny robots.

I am a philosopher, not a scientist, and we philosophers are better at questions than answers.

The earth has grown a nervous system, and it’s us.

The only meaning of life worth caring about is one that can withstand our best efforts to examine it.

Problems in science are sometimes made easier by adding complications.

I’m the guy who reputedly denies that people experience colors or pains, and thinks that thermostats think — just ask my critics.

No matter how smart you are, you’re smarter if you take the easy ways when they are available.

I am inclined to think that nothing could matter more than what people love. At any rate, I can think of no value that I would place higher. I would not want to live in a world without love.

Thanks to technology, what almost anybody can do has been multiplied a thousandfold, and our moral understanding about what we ought to do hasn’t kept pace.

Words are memes that can be pronounced.

Death is but an aspect of life, and the destruction of one material form is but a prelude to building up of another.

Either way, change will come. It could be bloody, or it could be beautiful. It depends on us.

Making bombs will only destroy us. It doesn’t matter whether we use them or not. They will destroy us either way.

Chaos breeds geniuses. It offers a man something to be a genius about.

When did our need to overpower one another, outgrow our desire to love?

I cause destruction everywhere I go I’m a wildfire gentle is not my nature.

Most of the narcissists are geniuses and masters of Psychology. But they are using their knowledge to eradicate, rather than to help humanity.

The excuse for the destruction of liberty is always the plea of necessary ‘ that there is no alternative.