Robert Sapolsky on nature

Stated most straightforwardly, most of earth’s humans have inherited their beliefs about the nature of birth and death and everything in between and thereafter from preliterate Middle Eastern pastoralists.

Like so many other animals, we have an often-frantic need to conform, belong, and obey. Such conformity can be markedly maladaptive, as we forgo better solutions in the name of the foolishness of the crowd.

If a rat is a good model for your emotional life, you’re in big trouble.

Every day, man is making bigger and better fool-proof things, and every day, nature is making bigger and better fools. So far, I think nature is winning.

Albert Einstein1879–1955

Nature does nothing uselessly.

Aristotle384–322 BCPolitics, Book I, 1253a.8

Nature scarcely ever gives us the very best; for that we must have recourse to art.

Baltasar Gracián1601–1658

• Art