The fact that some religious fanatics might support a theory doesn't invalidate it, anymore than the concurrence of UFO abduction cults invalidates the notion of extra-terrestrial life.

Success is like a fart - only your own smells nice.

We're so saturated with propaganda every way you look that we don't notice it. But when it isn't there, you notice.

Sane, normal people don't need power trips. So the lunatics end up in charge of everything.

The personal qualities necessary for attaining office are practically the opposite of those demanded by the office itself. The trouble with the damn system is that it selects for the skills needed to get elected, and nothing else. A test that you can only pass by cheating can't possibly select honest people.

Scientists are the easiest to fool. ... They think in straight, predictable, directable, and therefore misdirectable, lines. The only world they know is the one where everything has a logical explanation and things are what they appear to be. Children and conjurors-they terrify me. Scientists are no problem against them I feel quite confident.

It turns out that information leaks between universes at the quantum level. We think it accounts for all kinds of phenomena, from what drives evolution to strange insights and mystical experiences through the ages. The machine was built as an attempt to investigate and amplify them.

Kids don't have ruts yet that adults have carved into their minds. They're born logical. Crooked thinking has to be taught.