Selected Quotes

"I don't have the slightest interest in gold. I like understanding what works and what doesn't in human systems. To me that's not optional; that's a moral obligation. If you're capable of understanding the world, you have a moral obligation to become rational. And I don't see how you become rational hoarding gold. Even if it works, you're a jerk. "

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. "

"If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read "President Can't Swim". "

"You haven't yet patented graphene. Why is that? We considered patenting; we prepared a patent and it was nearly filed. Then I had an interaction with a big, multinational electronics company. I approached a guy at a conference and said, "We've got this patent coming up, would you be interested in sponsoring it over the years?" It's quite expensive to keep a patent alive for 20 years. The guy told me, "We are looking at graphene, and it might have a future in the long term. If after ten years we find it's really as good as it promises, we will put a hundred patent lawyers on it to write a hundred patents a day, and you will spend the rest of your life, and the gross domestic product of your little island, suing us." That's a direct quote. "

"Adams, irreverent to the end, declared that, if it could ever be demonstrated conclusively that no future state existed (no afterlife), his advice to every man, woman, and child was to “take opium.” "

"A teacher that can be replaced by a computer, should be. "

"It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value. "

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. "

"Like a woman, the work of the police is never done. "

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines "

"You could take all the gold that's ever been mined, and it would fill a cube 67 feet in each direction. For what that's worth at current gold prices, you could buy all -- not some -- all of the farmland in the United States. Plus, you could buy 10 ExxonMobils, plus have $1 trillion of walking-around money. Or you could have a big cube of metal. Which would you take? Which is going to produce more value? "

"It restores my faith in human nature to think that there are people who have been around Washington all this time and are not yet so cynical as to think that [the deficit] can‘t be solved by voluntary contributions. "

"That is one last thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out. "

"The follies which a man regrets most, in his life, are those which he didn't commit when he had the opportunity. "

"Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long. "

"Pilon lingered around after buying two dollars of wine from Torrelli. Once Torrelli left, Pilon managed to separate Mrs. Torrelli from some food, love and firewood. "It is seldom that one finds all things at one market," observed Pilon philosophically. "

"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand "

"Everything is going to become unimaginably worse and never get better again. "

"2 is not equal to 3, even for very large values of 2. "

"The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again. "

"I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal. "

"I should have drunk more champagne. "

"It will be the kiss by which all others in your life will be judged... and found wanting. "

"Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not to his own facts. "

"Any ad which quotes what I said on Sunday is a falsehood "