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Aristotle even quoted an estimate that the distance around the earth was 400,000 stadia.

— A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

All of nature was a record of crisis and destruction and adaptation and flourishing and being knocked back down again.

— Cibola Burn by James S. A. Corey

No one lived forever. But you fought for every minute you could get.

— Cibola Burn by James S. A. Corey

“Choosing to stand by while people kill each other is also an action,” she said. “We don’t do that here.”

— Cibola Burn by James S. A. Corey

Once is never. Twice is always.

— Cibola Burn by James S. A. Corey

He thought of her as a friend because he didn’t think about her much at all.

— Cibola Burn by James S. A. Corey

“Elvi is very comfortable with mysteries,” Fayez said to Felcia with a wink. “It’s why she has a hard time relating with those of us who feel anxious with our ignorance.”

— Cibola Burn by James S. A. Corey

“The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.”

— Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths

UC Santa Cruz’s Jackson Tolins and Jean Fox Tree demonstrated that those inconspicuous “uh-huhs” and “yeahs” and “hmms” and “ohs” that pepper our speech perform distinct, precise roles in regulating the flow of information from speaker to listener—both its rate and level of detail. Indeed, they are every bit as critical as ACKs are in TCP.

— Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths

The world’s most difficult word to translate has been identified as “ilunga,” from the Tshiluba language spoken in south-eastern DR Congo.… Ilunga means “a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time.”

— Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths

As a species, being constrained by the past makes us less perfectly adjusted to the present we know but helps keep us robust for the future we don’t.

— Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths

“It really is true that the company will build whatever the CEO decides to measure.”

— Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths

When Charles Darwin was trying to decide whether he should propose to his cousin Emma Wedgwood, he got out a pencil and paper and weighed every possible consequence. In favor of marriage he listed children, companionship, and the “charms of music & female chit-chat.” Against marriage he listed the “terrible loss of time,” lack of freedom to go where he wished, the burden of visiting relatives, the expense and anxiety provoked by children, the concern that “perhaps my wife won’t like London,” and having less money to spend on books. Weighing one column against the other produced a narrow margin of victory, and at the bottom Darwin scrawled, “Marry—Marry—Marry Q.E.D.”

— Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths