The poor are an especially important resource for innovation when they have the bravery and pluck to get out of the poor places in which they're living.

Modern elites live in bubbles of liberal affluence like Ann Arbor, Brookline, the Upper West Side, Palo Alto, or Chevy Chase. These places used to have impoverished neighborhoods nearby, but the poor people got chased out by young singles living in group homes, hipsters, and urban homesteading gay couples.

Inside every Sancho Panza there's a Don Quixote struggling to get out.

Predicting innovation is something of a self-canceling exercise: the most probable innovations are probably the least innovative.

In midlife, we're as dumb as we get.

Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.