“Emblematic of this era was the prolific Viennese surgeon Theodor Billroth. Born in 1821, Billroth studied music and surgery with almost equal verve. (The professions still often go hand in hand. Bo...”

“Intelligence...[is] not marathon rac[e]: there is no fixed criteria for success, no start or finish lines -- and running sideways or backwards, might secure victory.”

“If we define "beauty" as having blue eyes (and only blue eyes), then we will, indeed, find a "gene for beauty." If we define "intelligence" as the performance on only one kind of test, then we will...”

“Freaks become norms, and norms become extinct. Monster by monster, evolution advanced”

“Natures and features last until the grave”

“History repeats itself, in part because the genome repeats itself. And the genome repeats itself, in part because history does. The impulses, ambitions, fantasies, and desires that drive human hist...”

“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettie...”

“To know the history of science is to recognize the mortality of any claim to universal truth. ”

“The scientist only imposes two things, namely truth and sincerity, imposes them upon himself and upon other scientists.”

“Sometimes it's not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don't mean.”

“Dont cry and dont rage. Understand.”

“The only way to heal yourself was to understand. Understand the love or the hate or the cowardice, or the impulsiveness, the lack of will of the one who hurt you--the circumstances that twisted the...”