“The intelligence we will create from the reverse-engineering of the brain will have access to its own source code and will be able to rapidly improve itself in an accelerating iterative design cycl...”

“The pattern recognition theory of mind that I articulate in this book is based on a different fundamental unit: not the neuron itself, but rather an assembly of neurons, which I estimate to number ...”

“The purposeful destruction of information is the essence of intelligent work.”

“Play is just another version of work”

“The story of evolution unfolds with increasing levels of abstraction.”

“The evolution of animal behavior does constitute a learning process, but it is learning by the species, not by the individual, and the fruits of this learning process are encoded in DNA.”

“All words are pegs to hang ideas on.”

“A word is not the same with one writer as it is with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.”

“No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake....”

“Work should be personal. For all of us. Not just for the artist and entrepreneur. Work should have meaning for the accountant, the construction worker, the technologist, the manager and the clerk.”

“I used to think of work as a bad word. Back in the corporate world, work was something that prevented me from living, something that kept me from feeling satisfied or fulfilled or passionate. Even ...”

“It was such a spring day as breathes into a man an ineffable yearning, a painful sweetness, a longing that makes him stand motionless, looking at the leaves or grass, and fling out his arms to embr...”

“The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.”

“There are only two ways to live your life: as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is a miracle.”

“The moral of the tale is, don't live for the approval of others. The real you is here to find out the secret of life, not to satisfy someone else's opinion.”