Can all this just be an accident? Or could there be some alien intelligence behind it?

Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.

We look for the Secret - the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of the Wise, Supreme Enlightenment, 'God' or whatever...and all the time it is carrying us about...It is the human nervous system itself.

...reality is always plural and mutable.

...when dogma enters the brain, all intellectual activity ceases.

...an optimistic mind-set finds dozens of possible solutions for every problem that the pessimist regards as incurable.