“The world is outside us; our senses are within us. How, then, do the two come together so that we can know something? Obviously our senses can't go forth and drag an actual chunk if the world back ...”

“knowledge is conventionally viewed as belief plus a bunch of credentials”

“Reliance on other people's knowledge. . . . buys us all a lot of time. It also buys us, in essence, many billions of prosthetic brains.”

“Doubt is the act of challenging our beliefs. . . . This is an active, investigative doubt: the kind that inspires us to wander onto shaky limbs or out into left field; the kind that doesn't divide ...”

“If imagination is what enables us to conceive of and enjoy stories other than our own, and if empathy is the act of taking other peoples stories seriously, certainty deadens or destroys both qualit...”

“To err is to wander and wandering is the way we discover the world and lost in thought it is the also the way we discover ourselves. Being right might be gratifying but in the end it is static a me...”

“None of us can choose where we shall love...”

“There are so many men, all endlessly attempting to sweep me off my feet. And there is one of you, trying just the opposite. Making sure my feet are firm beneath me, lest I fall.”

“Whales feel cohesion, a sense of community, of loyalty. The distress call of a lone whale is enough to prompt its entire pod to rush to its side- a gesture that lands them nose to nose in the same ...”