Cauldron

He was usually easygoing, one of those guys with little respect for authority because of a conviction that people in charge tend to do stupid things.

“It’s all PR,” said Hutchins. “If we ever produced a person who was unrelentingly honest, everybody would want him dead.”

Technological civilizations don’t last long. You're all right until you get a printing press. Then a race starts between technology and common sense. And maybe technology always wins.

If you're paying attention to your wardrobe, Rudy believed, your mind isn’t sufficiently occupied.

“Technology is dangerous.”

“How do you mean?”

“It can provide horrendous weapons to idiots.”

The kids were both adolescents, at that happy stage where they could simultaneously make him confident about the future while they were sabotaging the present.

If you want creative and successful children, resign yourself to jousting with rebels.

At night the sea is very loud,

And voices ride the tide.

At another time, in another place,

Beneath the silent moon,

We laughed together.

If you want data to survive, carve it in rock.

“If some of the current politicians had been around a few thousand years ago,” she’d said, “we never would have gotten out of Africa. Boats cost too much.”