Sublime

In fact, it’s Douggie’s growing conviction that the greatest flaw of the species is its overwhelming tendency to mistake agreement for truth.

“I accept nothing on authority. A hypothesis must be backed by reason, or else it is worthless—and it goes against all the dictates of logic to suppose that you made me.”

There is room enough for an awful lot of people to be right about things and still not agree.

THE

“So the bartender points at the piano in the corner says, ‘Go ahead.’ Guy puts the octopus on the piano stool—Pianoctamus! Pianoctamum Bailey!—octopus flips up the lid, plays a few scales, then lays out a little étude on the piano.”

Pleasure in Depth! said the headline on the ad. The picture that went with it was the picture of the three sirens of Titan.

Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.

‘Commonly thought,’ you say? Many things are commonly thought, but perhaps not commonly thought all the way through.”