Cody Conroy

“The more you invest in a set of beliefs—the greater the sacrifice you make in the service of that conviction—the more resistant you will be to evidence that suggests that you are mistaken. You don’t give up. You double down.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War

“a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire, 5-Book Boxed Set: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, A Dance with Dragons

“Our guess is that machines capable enough to be useful interstellar explorers are necessarily so complex as to be vulnerable to mutation in their programs,” Dayan said. “They need not visit a nova. Sooner or later, if nothing else, cosmic radiation will do it. Generally, they lose their ‘wits’ and just drift on aimlessly forever. Probably no line of von Neumanns gets beyond a few hundred light-years before it goes effectively extinct.”
― Poul Anderson, Starfarers

“The fact that there are countless things we will never know, and many that we could not possibly know, does not mean they do not exist—only that we cannot prove it.”
― Poul Anderson, Starfarers