“I think scientists have a valid point when they bemoan the fact that it's socially acceptable in our culture to be utterly ignorant of math, whereas it is a shameful thing to be illiterate.”

“We are not quite conscious of the reason for our disdain when we refer to the illiterate past as wallowing in ignorance... What divides us from them is the column of print. Theirs was a total culture involving all the senses, while ours is a culture concentrated in the literate eye.”

“I think it's a rule that it's socially acceptable to wet yourself when aliens enter your mind for the first time. If it wasn't already, it is now.”

“What's the fun in standing in the outskirts of love and feeling superior? There's no shame in having got it wrong. Whereas its a shame when you don't even give yourself the chance of getting it right. Better to have loved and lost...”

“It wasn't the practices, I don't think, it was the feeling that the great, deadly, pointing forefinger of society was pointing at me--and the great voice of millions chanting, 'Shame. Shame. Shame.' It's society's way of dealing with someone different.”

“If faith cannot be reconciled with rational thinking, it has to be eliminated as an anachronistic remnant of earlier stages of culture and replaced by science dealing with facts and theories which are intelligible and can be validated.”