'Before the existence of patents and copyrights, the value of ideas was preserved by the maintenance of secrecy and by strictly private and elitist consumption. But once ideas can be owned, their value lies in disowning them by making them public—not only in the economic sense of the creation of surplus value, but also in the sense that the very meaning of conceptual ownership depends upon the knowledge of others of your ownership, upon their capacity to know your ideas without also being able to extract material profit from them.'

'O God, my God, what emptiness and mockeries did I now experience: for it was impressed upon me as right and proper in a boy to obey those who taught me, that I might get on in the world and excel in the handling of words to gain honor among men and deceitful riches. I, poor wretch, could not see the use of the things I was sent to school to learn; but if I proved idle in learning, I was soundly beaten. For this procedure seemed wise to our ancestors: and many, passing the same way in days past, had built a sorrowful road by which we too must go, with multiplication of grief and toil upon the sons of Adam.'

Now, when I think of Biggie's death, I'm filled with sadness.

Two moral phenomena:

1. The reluctance of someone accused, and acknowledged, to be guilty of doing something wrong, to refer to their wrong by name, to identify it as a wrong. (Dodges and evasions continue to tempt: 'what I did', 'when I did that'.)

2. The defining, fateful aspect a single action takes on, in all one's later life and reflection on life, when that action was the commission of a serious wrong. (Compare to all the other actions, not even necessarily rising to the level of deeds, which are done and forgotten in the course of living.)

'One could divide humanity into two classes: those who master a metaphor, and those who hold by a formula. Those with a bent for both are too few, they do not comprise a class.'

'our task is and remains above all not to mistake ourselves for others'

'for we must not make a man our friend against his will'

'It is useful to have examined in how many ways a word is said both for the sake of clarity (for someone would better know what it is he is conceding once it had been brought to light in how many ways the term is applied) and in order to make our deductions concern the thing itself rather than being about a word. For when it is unclear in how many ways something is said, it is possible that the answerer and the questioner are not thinking about the same thing; but once it has been brought to light in how many ways it is applied and which of these the answerer is thinking about in conceding the premiss, the questioner would appear ridiculous if he did not make his argument about this.'

'…the hand is a tool of tools…'