Quote people the way they actually said it.

ask not for whom the bell tolls

Conjecture or hypothesis must come before observation or perception: we have inborn expectations; we have latent inborn knowledge, in the form of latent expectations, to be activated by a stimuli to which we react as a rule while engaged in active exploration.

Philosophie, jedenfalls in dem vergleichsweise engen Sinn unserer Tage, hat er [René Descartes], auf’s Ganze seines Lebens gesehen, eher nebenher betrieben. Aus seiner Korrespondenz geht dies deutlich genug hervor.

[U]nlike any functionality that has ever been programmed to date, [creativity] can be achieved neither by a specification nor a test of the outputs. What is needed is nothing less than a breakthrough in philosophy, a new epistemological theory that explains how brains create explanatory knowledge and hence defines, in principle, without ever running them as programs, which algorithms possess that functionality and which do not.

[Unlike] any functionality that has ever been programmed to date, [creativity] can be achieved neither by a specification nor a test of the outputs. What is needed is nothing less than a breakthrough in philosophy, a new epistemological theory that explains how brains create explanatory knowledge and hence defines, in principle, without ever running them as programs, which algorithms possess that functionality and which do not.

[Unlike] any functionality that has ever been programmed to date, [creativity] can be achieved neither by a specification nor a test of the outputs. What is needed is nothing less than a breakthrough in philosophy, a new epistemological theory that explains how brains create explanatory knowledge and hence defines, in principle, without ever running them as programs, which algorithms possess that functionality and which do not.

Theories are nets cast to catch what we call ‘the world’: to rationalize, to explain, and to master it. We endeavor to make the mesh ever finer and finer.

[T]here is one feature … that is generally missing in [pseudoscience] … It’s a kind of scientific integrity…

The reach of an explanation ... already applied, by its nature as an explanation, when its creators first thought of it

Biological knowledge is non-explanatory and therefore has limited reach; explanatory human knowledge can have broad or even unlimited reach

I think that there is only one way to science — or to philosophy, for that matter: to meet a problem, to see its beauty and fall in love with it… even if you do obtain a solution, you may then discover, to your delight, the existence of a whole family of enchanting, though perhaps difficult, problem children

You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.

لا أريد أن أكون اسطورا

My mother wanted a child, and she didn’t need a man to do it.

…advance or promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify.

No amount of ingenuity can ensure the construction of a successful theory. We also need luck; […]

[T]he success of science […] depends upon luck, [and more]

the virtue of rationality means the recognition and acceptance of reason as one's only source of knowledge.

Deciding ‘I should do whatever pleases me most’ [when determining what sort of life to want] would give you very little clue, because what pleases you depends on your moral judgement of what constitutes a good life, not vice versa. [I]f I ask you for advice about what objectives to pursue in life, it is no good telling me to do what […] I prefer, because I don’t know what I prefer to do until I have decided what sort of life I want to lead or how I should want the world to be.

Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so _                _and magnificent, yet so vicious and_                     _?

A conspiracy theory is ▪ an explanation of observed events in current affairs and history … which ▪ alleges that those events were planned and caused in secret by powerful (or ▪ allegedly powerful) conspirators, who thereby… ▪ benefit at the expense of others, and who therefore… ▪ lie, and suppress evidence, about their secret actions, and… ▪ lie about the motives for their public actions.

we were not alone in our struggle; Indigenous Peoples around the world faced the same colonial structures, and together, we were stronger

You can slog through bleak days, resenting the relentless present, but mere words suspended in silence cannot be your salvation.

Any book worth banning is a book worth reading.