It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.

It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.

Insanity -- a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.

Insanity -- a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.

Innovators and creators are persons who can to a higher degree than average accept the condition of aloneness. They are read more

Innovators and creators are persons who can to a higher degree than average accept the condition of aloneness. They are more willing to follow their own vision, even when it takes them far from the mainland of the human community. Unexplored places do not frighten them- or not, at any rate, as much as they frighten those around them. This is one of the secrets of their power. That which we call "genius" has a great deal to do with courage and daring, a great deal to do with nerve.

It is perhaps not entirely so, though it has often been said, that man makes his God in his own read more

It is perhaps not entirely so, though it has often been said, that man makes his God in his own image. Rather does he create Him in the image of his cravings and dreams- in the image of what man wants to be. God making could be part of the process by which a society realizes its aspirations: it first embodies them in the conception of a particular God, and then proceeds to imitate that God. The confidence requisite for attempting the unprecedented is most effectively generated by the fiction that in realizing the new we are imitating rather than originating. Our preoccupation with heaven can be part of an effort to find precedents for the unprecedented.

The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.

The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.

Knowledge can be enormously costly, and is often scattered in widely uneven fragments, too small to be individually usable in read more

Knowledge can be enormously costly, and is often scattered in widely uneven fragments, too small to be individually usable in decision making. The communication and coordination of these scattered fragments of knowledge is one of the basic problems- perhaps the basic problem- of any society.

Brain-washing starts in the cradle.

Brain-washing starts in the cradle.

To be aware how fruitful the playful mood can be is to be immune to the propaganda of the alienated, read more

To be aware how fruitful the playful mood can be is to be immune to the propaganda of the alienated, which extols resentment as a fuel of achievement.

Because we do not understand the brain very well we are constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a read more

Because we do not understand the brain very well we are constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it. In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard. ('What else could it be?') I was amused to see that Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought that the brain worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electro-magnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill, and I am told some of the ancient Greeks thought the brain functions like a catapult. At present, obviously, the metaphor is the digital computer.