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"Why do we say razzle-dazzle instead of dazzle-razzle? Why super-duper, helter-skelter, harum-scarum, hocus-pocus, willy-nilly, hully-gully, roly-poly, holy moly, herky-jerky, walkie-talkie, namby-pamby, mumbo-jumbo, loosey-goosey, wing-ding, wham-bam, hobnob, razza-matazz, and rub-a-dub-dub? I thought you'd never ask. Consonants differ in "obstruency"-the degree to which they impede the flow of air, ranging from merely making it resonate, to forcing it noisily past an obstruction, to stopping it up altogether. The word beginning with the less obstruent consonant always comes before the word beginning with the more obstruent consonant. Why ask why?"
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"Getting an education is not only a matter of checking the boxes as your life progresses, it is a gift which can enrich every aspect of your world."
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Personal Development
"If you are still breathing, don not stop learning."
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Personal Development
"If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking."
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Personal Development
"It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English - up to fifty words used in correct context - no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese."
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Personal Development
"If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come."
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Personal Development
"All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity, that the dry, shriveled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut."
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Personal Development
"The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust."
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Personal Development
"I who know many present things by my art," replied the Hermit with a smile, "have yet little knowledge of things future. Therefore I do not know whether any man or woman or beast in the whole world will be alive when the sun sets tonight. But be of good hope. The damsel is likely to live as long as any her age."
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Personal Development
"Have books 'happened' to you? Unless your answer to that question is 'yes,' I'm unsure how to talk to you."
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Personal Development
"Knowing more than someone does not necessarily mean that you know every single thing they know."
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Personal Development
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"Parents provide their children with genes as well as an environment, so the fact that talkative parents have kids with good language skills could simply mean that and that the same genes that make parents talkative make children articulate."
Children
"As many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical claim that people are clones."
Equality
"Computation has finally demystified mentalistic terms. Beliefs are inscriptions in memory, desires are goal inscriptions, thinking is computation, perceptions are inscriptions triggered by sensors, trying is executing operations triggered by a goal."
Intelligence
"Statisticians tell us that people underestimate the sheer number of coincidences that are bound to happen in a world governed by chance."
Knowledge
"We will never have a perfect world, but it's not romantic or naA ve to work toward a better one."
Philosophy
"I believe that the rape-is-not-about-sex doctrine will go down in history as an example of extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds. It is preposterous on the face of it, does not deserve its sanctity, is contradicted by a mass of evidence, and is getting in the way of the only morally relevant goal surrounding rape, the effort to stamp it out."
Society
"Reading is a technology for perspective-taking. When someone else's thoughts are in your head, you are observing the world from that person's vantage point."
Education
"Behavioral science is not for sissies."
Science
"The mind is not designed to grasp the laws of probability, even though the laws rule the universe."
Science
"The Rights Revolutions too have given us ideals that educated people today take for granted but that are virtually unprecedented in human history, such as that people of all races and creeds have equal rights, that women should be free from all forms of coercion, that children should never, ever be spanked, that students should be protected from bullying, and that there's nothing wrong with being gay. I don't find it at all implausible that these are gifts, in part, of a refined and widening application of reason."
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