“We are inclined to think of hunters and gatherers as poor because they don't have anything; perhaps better to think of them for that reason as free.”

“The poor we have always with us, and the purpose of the Lord in providing the poor is to enable us of the better classes to amuse ourselves by investigating them and uplifting them and at dinners telling how charitable we are. The poor don't like it much. They have no gratitude. They would rather be uplifters themselves. But if they are taken firmly in hand they can be kept reasonably dependent and interesting for years.”

“Would he not say with Homer,. Better to be the poor servant of a poor master, and to endure anything, rather than think as they do and live after their ...”

“I don't think science is hard to teach because humans aren't ready for it, or because it arose only through a fluke, or because, by and large, we don't have the brainpower to grapple with it. Instead, the enormous zest for science that I see in first-graders and the lesson from the remnant hunter-gatherers both speak eloquently: A proclivity for science is embedded deeply within us, in all times, places, and cultures. It has been the means for our survival. It is our birthright. When, through indifference, inattention, incompetence, or fear of skepticism, we discourage children from science, we are disenfranchising them, taking from them the tools needed to manage their future.”

“When people don't do anything they don't think anything, and when people don't think anything there's nothing to think about them.- Harriet the Spy”

“We think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we are to think conceptually.”