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Myths and fictions accustom... people... to think in certain ways, to believe in... certain standards, to want certain things, and to observe certain rules. ...[T]hereby ...artificial instincts ...enable millions of strangers to cooperate ...This network of artificial instinct is ...'Culture'.

It (Gossip) comes so naturally to us that it seems as if our language evolved for the very purpose.

Tolerance is not a Sapiens trademark. In modern times, a small difference in skin colour, dialect or religion has been enough to prompt one group of Sapiens to set about exterminating another group.

Sapiens did not forage only for food and materials. They foraged for knowledge as well.

Planet Earth was separated into several ecosystems, each made up of a unique assembly of animals and plants. Homo sapiens was about to put an end to this biological exuberance.

Ned found that if he thought about things like that too much, the accident of it all, his mind started down unsettling paths.…

Could you make a pattern out of any of this? Stitch together the seeming randomness into something that had meaning? Is that what life was about, he wondered: trying to make that pattern, to have things make sense?

His choice here, no one else to blame. Sometimes, he thought, life was easier when you had people to stop you. Maybe that was something parents were good for.

We’ll fall off that bridge when we cross it.

In this world, where we find ourselves, we need compassion more than anything, I think, or we are all alone.

Companies die because their managers focus on the economic activity of producing goods and services, and they forget that their organizations' true nature is that of a community of humans.

But knowledge, however you got it, changed things, Ned Marriner thought. You couldn’t go back to not knowing, even if you wanted to.

I think that anyone who will take the trouble to consider the matter carefully will arrive at the same conclusion as I have, that art owes its origin to Nature herself, that this beautiful creation the world supplied the first model, while the original teacher was that divine intelligence which has not only made us superior to the other animals, but like God Himself, if I may venture to say it.