Peter Brown

“There is an important feature of modern science that is almost completely missing in all the thinkers I have mentioned, from Thales to Plato: none of them attempted to verify or even (aside perhaps from Zeno) seriously to justify their speculations. In”
― Steven Weinberg, To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science

“And in yet another unsung accomplishment, the poorest of the poor—the unsheltered homeless—fell in number between 2007 and 2015 by almost a third, despite the Great Recession.”
― Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

“Lists (3) alcohol, fasting, thirsting, sweat lodges, self-mutilation, sleep deprivation, dance, bleeding, mushrooms, immersion in ice water, kava, flagellation with thorns or animal teeth, cactus flesh, tobacco, exposure to the elements, long-distance running, hypnosis, meditation, rhythmic drumming and chanting, jimsonweed, nightshade, Salvia divinorum, pungent or aromatic scents, toad sweat, tantric sex, spinning in circles, amphetamines, sedatives, opioids, hallucinogens, nitrous oxide, oxytocin, holding one’s breath, jumping off cliffs, nitrites, kratom, coca leaves, cocoa, caffeine, entheogens— ethylene, an entheogenic gas, escapes from the ground under Delphi”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, 2312

“To acknowledge that the lives of the lower and middle classes of developed countries have improved in recent decades is not to deny the formidable problems facing 21st-century economies.”
― Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress