We owe our big brains less to inventiveness than to conflicts of interest among social minds engaged in an arms race to be the best at manipulating others.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
And we owe science to the combined energies of individual men of genius, rather than to any tendency to progress inherent in civilization.
Our brains are either our greatest assets or our greatest liabilities.
Our whole social environment seems to us to be filled with forces which really exist only in our own minds.
Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds. I may be given credit for having blazed the trail, but when I look at the subsequent developments I feel the credit is due to others rather than to myself.
Luckily for writers - and unluckily for history - every scientific idea creates human conflict.
The great advantage of being human is that we can employ rational thought and resolve to change our circumstances.
The economic and political roots of the conflicts are too strong for us to pretend to create a lasting state of harmonious understanding between men.
We are the yin and the yang of the creative process.
To the brains of our predecessors we owe all of our inheritance of civilization and culture.
We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.