However, there is one respect in which the human species has shown not the slightest originality—its excessive reproductive vigor. - Fred Hoyle

Inevitably we are led to ask: why does this appalling rubbish get published—and not merely published, but displayed prominently in the very heart of an apparently respectable newspaper? In a word, because this is what people want, and if The Times didn’t fill itself pretty well from cover to cover with such stuff it would soon go out of business.

Any organization is better than no organization. Tribal customs show great variety, but they have in common the property of enabling a number of humans to act in concert with each other. It is the communal character of group action that is important, not the particular customs of any particular tribe. Group action is the essential common denominator of all tribal life. And any group acting together is far more powerful than the same number of persons acting only as individuals.

His new leisure also afforded my father the opportunity of indulging another of his favorite occupations—talking. There was a great deal of talk in our house, which had two effects on me: one, that I learned not to listen when I don’t want to listen; and the other, an aversion to talking.