Quotes from Douglas E. Richards

spiderwebs that looked expansive and sturdy enough to snare a flying dog.

Thomas Babington Macaulay,

we need accomplishment and achievement to have a strong sense of self-esteem.

Men choose high-paying fields like engineering, chemistry, and mining more often than women do. Women choose lower-paying fields like education and social work more often than men do. This accounts for most of the difference.

Who knew that sex was so much better when the relationship had nothing to do with sex? And

Thomas Babington Macaulay, Horatius at the Bridge

whereby tiny chips were implanted in their brains, allowing them to communicate telepathically with each other and with Sage.

Contrary to fiction, you can't hypnotize someone to commit armed robbery, or jump off a building, against their will. A person can only be hypnotized to do something they would already be willing to do otherwise. Same with this. We can strengthen a tendency, put a thought into your sleeping head, but it can't contradict how you feel consciously.

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness." —Joseph Conrad, Novelist

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." —Albert Einstein

there are two trillion galaxies in the known Universe, each with an average of a hundred billion stars. Which comes to two hundred billion trillion stars in total.

And just like with the cell phone, the replica is not only perfect, it even maintains the electron patterns of old texts, emails, and so on. Or, in the case of a man, the replica has every last neuronal pathway and memory intact. Along with whatever ineffable quality you call the spark of life.

It never ceased to amaze him the power of the sex drive. No matter how intelligent and rational a person was otherwise, the sex drive was controlled by more primitive regions, and could turn the most brilliant man on Earth into an animal, flirting with disaster in pursuit of physical gratification, even when he knew in his rational mind that this was nothing but a trick played on him by his incorrigible limbic system. Walsh entered

poor being seemed like a wonderful . . . person. It wasn't her fault that she looked like a colossal wasp. And it wasn't her problem. It was their problem. And they would have to find a way to overcome it.

I've taken such a giant step onto that slope that I've slid straight down to the cesspool at its bottom.

I know you don't do what you do for medals, but there will be several coming your way.

Make your utopia too utopian and boredom would set in. And malaise. Some would continue to work hard and challenge themselves at every turn—even if all of their physical and financial needs were taken care of. But many more would fall into the trap of being lulled into a low energy state of endless leisure—and little true happiness. A state of dependence without any real sense of progress, or growth, or accomplishment. A slow poisoning of the soul of the species.

Truth doesn't matter! It's what people will believe that matters.

to be an elite warrior was to strike savagely, without hesitation or second-guessing. No queasiness over hurting an opponent, no mercy, and no stopping to congratulate oneself. Nothing but focus, speed, confidence, and savage intent.

She was especially interested in finding a way to rule in, or rule out, the existence of a soul. Above all else, this was the most fundamental question posed by the capabilities her father's technology made possible. His results so far seemed to indicate that one didn't exist. But absence of proof was not the same as proof of absence.

Luck is the last refuge of the incompetent,

To be the master of any branch of knowledge, you must master those which lie next to it.

People have an innate tendency to almost instantly form discrete groups. And almost instantly become biased against anyone in a different group.

no money could ever be made from it, only lost.