Charles C. Mann: If Christian civilization was so wonderful, why were its inhabitants leaving?
Elizabeth Fenn: You have to wonder: what were all those people up to in all that time?
Dean R. Snow: It's really easy to kid yourself.
On Drew Gilpin Faust: She wanted to understand how whole classes of people can get caught up in a shared worldview, to the point that they simply can't see.
Jose Saramago: If only all life's deceptions were like this one, and all they had to do was to come to some agreement ... Were it not for the fact that we're blind this mix-up would never have happened, You're right, our problem is that we're blind.
Joe Nocera: They just want theirs. That is the culture they have created.
Charles C. Mann: Minute changes in baseline assumptions produce wildly different results.
Paul Graham: Surprises are things that you not only didn't know, but that contradict things you thought you knew. And so they're the most valuable sort of fact you can get.
Lucas Foglia: Rewilding: the process of creating a lifestyle that is independent of the domestication of civilization.
Dan Kildee: Much of the land will be given back to nature. People will enjoy living near a forest or meadow.
Freeman Dyson: Now, after three billion years, the Darwinian interlude is over.
Charles C. Mann: I felt alone and small, but in a way that was curiously like feeling exalted.
Michiru Hoshino: Oh! I feel it. I feel the cosmos!
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