Freeman Dyson:

The truths of science are so profoundly concealed that the only thing we can really be sure of is that much of what we expect to happen won't come to pass.

Carl Sagan:

If we ever reach the point where we think we thoroughly understand who we are and where we came from, we will have failed.

David Brooks:

The information universe tempts you with mildly pleasant but ultimately numbing diversions. The only way to stay fully alive is to dive down to your obsessions six fathoms deep. Down there it's possible to make progress toward fulfilling your terrifying longing, which is the experience that produces the joy.

Charlie Huenemann:

Technology is great, but the more advanced it gets, the more likely it is that its fundamental principles will become obscure to us. Without knowing those fundamental principles, we have trouble "unthinking" our way out of technological problems. We become trapped by wrong assumptions about what's essential to a machine.

Robert Pogue Harrison:

The twenty-first century has only aggravated the political, moral, social, and environmental concussions of the twentieth. There would be reason to applaud the would-be world-changers and start-up companies of Silicon Valley if they made it their business to resist or reverse this process of planetary upheaval, the way environmentalists seek to do with the wounds we have afflicted on nature. Sadly they have no such militancy in their souls, nor much thoughtfulness. With a few exceptions, our new tech armies rarely take the time to think through what they are doing. Or if they do, they tend to think in ways that only add to the turmoil and agitation.