“It is my opinion that humans are largely what they make of themselves; in other words, "human nature" is not so much an empirical reality as a process of self-construction. This means that if people become what they think they are, what they think they are is exceedingly important.”

“People are always a little disconcerted when you don't recognize them, they are so important to themselves, it is a shock to discover of what small importance they are to others.[The human element]”

“What a familiarity with the construction of Turing test bots had begun to show me was that we fail - again and again- to actually be human with other humans, so maddeningly much of the time.”

“Life is too short to waste any amount of time on wondering what other people think about you. In the first place, if they had better things going on in their lives, they wouldn't have the time to sit around and talk about you. What's important to me is not others' opinions of me, but what's important to me is my opinion of myself.”

“Everyone has their opinion and everyone loves it. Nobody wants to accepts others opinion. So to make them happy be diplomatic and speak unclearly, let them interpret your thoughts by themselves, let them think what they want to think”

“Science fiction is very well suited to asking philosophical questions; questions about the nature of reality, what it means to be human, how do we know the things that we think we know.”