Major Sánchez grunted. “Nice word, ‘trivial.’ Means you got it—cojones—you got no worry. If you don’t—” - Gregory Benford

Ummm," Alicia said, trying to be polite. "Still sounds like we're just making this up as we go along." "We are." Max grinned. "Invent, then check. It's really the only way to make progress.

One of the laws of nature," Gordon said, "is that half the people have got to be below average." "For a Gaussian distribution, yeah," Cooper said. "Sad, though.

As Kurt Vonnegut pointed out in his first novel, Player Piano, some people love problem-solving and tinkering—and that is the final, irreducible driver of human history. Wars and faiths and leaders come and go, but the problem-solvers’ slow, steady work is the fulcrum upon which history turns.