What has disappeared, with the decline of formal religion, is not religion but formality.
Dec 312021
Dec 302021
Biology is upstream of everything.
Dec 292021
To write, to attempt to bring a stranger to one’s view by words alone, shows the deepest faith in human nature: the confirmed skeptic becomes a devout missionary when he puts it on the page.
Dec 282021
Biography is open to any writer who possesses industry without talent. If he also lacks industry, there is memoir.
Dec 272021
There is a limit to the number of people who can be sanely ruled under a single polity, a Dunbar’s Number for governance. It is probably greater than 150 and certainly less than 300 million.
Dec 242021
Some jobs you keep only if you solve the problem you are charged with, others only if you don’t.
Dec 232021
Opinions are like sausages: if you know how they’re made they get harder to swallow.
Dec 222021
More of a bad thing is always worse, and often so is more of a good thing.
Dec 212021
A large reputation, like an impetus in a vacuum, can, in the absence of a countervailing force, be coasted on forever.
Dec 202021
The ambitious man believes, with perfect sincerity, in whatever furthers his ambition.