Whoever has the power in society determines what can be studied, determines what can be observed, determines what can be thought. - Michael Crichton

They just posture and pontificate. Nobody tests. Nobody does field research. Nobody dares to solve the problems — because the solution might contradict your philosophy, and for most people clinging to beliefs is more important than succeeding in the world.

Without question, the notion of the doctor as a legitimate fee-for-service entrepreneur, making his fortune from misfortunes of is patients, is old-fashioned, distasteful, and doomed.

Straight linearity, which we have come to take for granted in everything from physics to fiction, simply does not exist. Linearity is an artificial way of viewing the world. Real life isn't a series of interconnected events occurring one after another like beads strung on a necklace. Life is actually a series of encounters in which one event may change those that follow in a wholly unpredictable, even devastating way. That's a deep truth about the structure of our universe. But, for some reason, we insist behaving as if it were not true.