After all, however free and powerful it might have been, it was not free to contradict the Three Laws or the other programming Lawrence had used to create it. It was not free to contradict its nature, such as it was. But then, at some level, neither are we.

Starting with a clearly interpretable experiment with a simple biological system can lead to a wider insight relevant more generally to how life works. For precisely this reason I have spent most of my career investigating the simple and easily studied yeast cells, rather than more complex human cells.

Only the promise of eternal growth made sense of eternal life.

She believed the only thing capable of saving humans as a species would be a civic gene—one that caused humans to act not just in their own self-interest but also in the interests of the generations to follow. Evolution hadn’t solved that because few species had ever been in a position to destroy their entire ecosystem before.

But the outside world seemed filled with chaos. A lot of regular people seemed decent, but there was so much needless suffering and deprivation out in the public world, all of it—to her mind—caused by evolved behaviors whose usefulness had long since passed. A proclivity for superstition and tribal conflict.

The future is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed.

Because human beings remember with neurons, we are disposed to see more of what we have already seen, hear anew what we have heard most often, think just what we have always thought. Our minds are burdened by an informational inertia whose headlong course is not easy to slow. As a life lengthens, momentum gathers.

“From modern neuroanatomy,” writes a pair of neuroscience researchers, “it is apparent that the entire neocortex of humans continues to be regulated by the paralimbic regions from which it evolved.”

This was the way we loved, until the night became a silent day. And as I lay there with her I could see how important physical love was, how necessary it was for us to be in each other's arms, giving and taking. The universe was exploding, each particle away from the next, hurtling us into dark and lonely space, eternally tearing us away from each other—child out of the womb, friend away from friend, moving from each other, each through his own pathway toward the goal-box of solitary death.

Strange about learning; the farther I go the more I see that I never knew even existed. A short while ago I foolishly thought I could learn everything—all the knowledge in the world. Now I hope only to be able to know of its existence, and to understand one grain of it. Is there time?

We don’t yet know whether we humans are the only stargazers in our cosmos, or even the first, but we’ve already learned enough about our Universe to know that it has the potential to wake up much more fully than it has thus far.

There’s a reason, after all, why “someone who is quite green to a problem” will sometimes solve it on their first attempt: they are unconstrained by the biases that build up over time.

If you cannot simplify or solve via similarities, try to restate the question: “Change the words. Change the viewpoint. . . . Break loose from certain mental blocks which are holding you in certain ways of looking at a problem.”

Biology never checks off a problem and calls it quits. It reinvents solutions continually.

All you ever were was a little bit of the universe, thinking to itself.

Brain cells last as long as you do. You are issued a hundred billion or so at birth, and that is all you are ever going to get. It has been estimated that you lose five hundred of them an hour, so if you have any serious thinking to do there really isn't a moment to waste.

The best things in life are beyond money; their price is agony and sweat and devotion.

All she was, each bone and organ, cell and chemical and molecule and atom and electron, proton and nucleus, every elementary particle, each wave-front of energy, from here... not just the Orbital (dizzy again, touching snow with gloved hands), but the Culture, the galaxy, the universe... This is our place and our time and our life, and we should be enjoying it.  But are we?  Look in from outside; ask yourself... Just what are we doing?

That was another thing she taught me. That you are what you do.

Therefore, things must be learned only to be unlearned again or, more likely, to be corrected.