I would trade all the advantages of humanity to be a fly on the wall when Franklin and Jefferson discussed liberty, Lenin and Trotsky revolution, New… - Stephen Jay Gould

Scientific questions cannot be decided by majority vote in any case.

True majorities, in a TV-dominated and anti-intellectual age, may need sound bites and flashing lights—and I am not against supplying such lures if they draw children into even a transient concern with science. But every classroom has one <nowiki>[Oliver]</nowiki> Sacks, one <nowiki>[Eric]</nowiki> Korn, or one <nowiki>[Jonathan]</nowiki> Miller, usually a lonely child with a passionate curiosity about nature, and a zeal that overcomes pressures for conformity. Do not the one in fifty deserve their institutions as well—magic places, like cabinet museums, that can spark the rare flames of genius?

We are storytelling animals, and cannot bear to acknowledge the ordinariness of our daily lives