A 'philosophical dictionary' is not a dictionary of philosophy that you use to look up obscure thinkers or recondite terms. It is a collection of brief and pithy essays on diverse topics, informed by one vision, and usually arranged in alphabetical order.

I'm a dilettante. My governing word is 'curiosity.'

Some people say they use images to help them remember intricacies. Others say they just remember. If they are able to form an image of the face, it is because they remember how it was: it is not that an image guides memory, but that memory produces an image, or the sense of imaging. We have no agreed way to talk clearly about such things.

Each of us becomes a new person as we re-describe the past.

Before I was reading science fiction, I read Hemingway. Farewell to Arms was my first adult novel that said not everything ends well. It was one of those times where reading has meant a great deal to me, in terms of my development - an insight came from that book.

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

It is absolutely critical for competitiveness in the United States for us to really raise the bar in education, especially in math, in science, in technology.

In both religion and science, some people are dishonest, exploitative, incompetent and exhibit other human failings.