bodr's submitted quotes
A theory in science is a logical creation. It reflects the most accurate experimental observations and the best understanding of how the world works. Yet a scientific theory doesn’t necessarily represent absolute truth. It can only capture the state of our knowledge so far. There’s every chance that a new piece of evidence will come to light that disproves the theory, and sends the theoreticians back to the drawing board.
If we wash our hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless we side with the powerful - we don't remain neutral.
The more we understand the world, the less bewildering it becomes, and the more we’re able to change it.
We all appreciate music, even if we can’t compose or perform it. Likewise, the ideas of science can be accessed and marveled at by everyone.
Most of the biggest catastrophes that we've witnessed rarely come from information that is secret or hidden. It comes from information that is freely available and out there, but that we are willfully blind to, because we can't handle, don't want to handle, the conflict that it provokes. But when we dare to break that silence, or when we dare to see, and we create conflict, we enable ourselves and the people around us to do our very best thinking.
Open information is fantastic, open networks are essential. But the truth won't set us free until we develop the skills and the habit and the talent and the moral courage to use it. Openness isn't the end. It's the beginning.
You can never pinpoint the exact moment that a species came to be, because it never did. Just like how you used to be a baby and now you're older, but there was no single day when you went to bed young and woke up old. (...) There was no first human. It sounds like a paradox, it sounds like it breaks the whole theory of evolution, but it's really a key to truly understanding how evolution works. Evolution happens like a movie, with frames moving by both quickly and gradually, and we often can't see the change while it's occurring. Every time we find a fossil, it's a snapshot back in time, often with thousands of frames missing in between, and we're forced to reconstruct the whole film. Life is what happens in between the snapshots. Instead of a nice smooth road this is a journey on stepping stones and we give each one their own name.
It`s a mistake to think that in hard choices, one alternative really is better than the other, but we`re too stupid to know which, and since we don`t know which, we might as well take the least risky option. Even taking two alternatives side by side with full information, a choice can still be hard. Hard choices are hard not because of us or our ignorance; they`re hard because there is no best option.
True empowerment comes from giving yourself the permission to think and act.