Date: September 27, 2012

"The conservative mind, a repository of fresh ideas just two decades ago, is now little more than a click-click slide projector holding a tray of apocalyptic images of modern life that keeps spinning around, raising the viewer’s fever with every rotation."

— Lilla, Mark (b. 1956)

Date: August 21, 2012

"Though her book is entitled 'In Praise of Messy Lives' (The Dial Press, 288 pp., $25), Ms. Roiphe’s mind is neat as a pin, untroubled by the unexpected inference, the awareness of mitigating factors in television or film or literature that might unmake her arguments."

— D'Addario, Daniel

Date: March 9, 2013

"Their noses and ears full of tufts of hair, their brains crackling with mental electricity, their flappy trousers hoiked biffin-tight, and their little odd socks showing, they reassured the hoi polloi that, although they were very clever, and we needed and valued them as a society, these people ...

— Lee, Stewart (b. 1968)

Date: April 9, 2013

"As I scan the statements of my memory bank for early deposits (it'd be a kid's memory bank account at a neurological NatWest where you're encouraged to become a greedy little capitalist with an escalating family of porcelain pigs), I see her in her hairy helmet, condescending on Nationwide, evis...

— Brand, Russell (b. 1975)

Date: April 9, 2013

"Perhaps my early apathy and indifference are a result of what Thatcher deliberately engendered, the idea that 'there is no such thing as society', that we are alone on our journey through life, solitary atoms of consciousness."

— Brand, Russell (b. 1975)

Date: April 12, 2013

"This insight implied that the brain is a creativity machine, which obtains incomplete information from the outside world and completes it."

— Kandel, Eric R. (b. 1929)

Date: April 12, 2013

"All of which goes to show that the real 'eye' of the beholder is the brain itself."

— Kandel, Eric R. (b. 1929)

Date: April 15, 2013

"Big data is like the offensive coordinator up in the booth at a football game who, with altitude, can see patterns others miss. But the head coach and players still need to be on the field of subjectivity."

— Brooks, David (b. 1961)

Date: April 23, 2013

"Maybe I’ve been in school too long; doctoral study has a way of turning your head into a never-ending seminar, and I’m now capable of having complicated, inconclusive thoughts about nearly any subject."

— Rothman, Joshua

Date: April 23, 2013

"Perhaps that's the rational conclusion, but, if so, it's beset on all sides by confounding little puzzles; they act like streams that divert and weaken the river of rational thought."

— Rothman, Joshua