112 Quotations Found

The myth of human exceptionalism is as unsettling as it is irrational. The idea of our superiority runs with mercenary and sometimes aggressive features of our psychology. Being animal is a kind of syndrome for us, a peculiar combination of symptoms, emotions and opinions. It’s something we deny, manipulate as a weapon and seek to escape. At other times, being animal is given as a … [ Read more ]

Author: Melanie Challenger | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Insight, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior

[Adam] Smith saw things differently. Trade is not zero-sum, he wrote. Rather, trade increases the size of the market, which allows for greater labor specialization. Specialized labor is more productive than non-specialized labor, so that a world of trade and specialization, in which many people focus on one task and exchange their produce with others in mutually beneficial trades, is one in which everyone is … [ Read more ]

Author: Ryan Avent | Source: Evonomics | Subjects: Economics | Economy, Insight, Life & Society

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

Author: Mark Twain | Subjects: Concepts, Creativity and Innovation, Insight, Personal Improvement

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

Author: Mark Twain | Subjects: Insight, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior

A dream is an answer to a question we haven’t learned how to ask.

Author: The X-Files | Subjects: Insight, Life & Society

The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.

Author: Muhammad Ali | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Insight, Life & Society

The past, as we all know, is dead. Yet we perpetuate its anguish, preserve its romance, and appreciate, by God, its beauty.

Author: Lee Smith | Subjects: Insight, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.

Author: George F. Will | Subjects: Insight, Psychology | Behavior

Language is always a placeholder for a culture’s evolving understanding of itself, the space in which we work out our concepts as we learn how to think about them in learning how to speak of them.

Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Insight, Language, Life & Society

Human beings have two core impulses. First, the impulse to be selfish, to conquer. But we also have, in my belief, an equally powerful impulse to appreciate, support, and nurture one another. Which impulse wins out depends on what we’re fighting for.

Author: Greg Epstein | Source: Vox | Subjects: Insight, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior

For in revery you cannot rise above your achievements nor fall lower than your failures.

Author: Kahlil Gibran | Subjects: Insight, Life & Society

If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.

Author: Lao Tzu | Subjects: Insight, Life & Society

Where observation is concerned, chance favors only the prepared mind.

Author: Louis Pasteur | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Insight

Man’s brain lives in the 20th century; the heart of most men lives still in the Stone Age. The majority of men have not yet acquired the maturity to be independent, to be rational, to be objective. They need myths and idols to endure the fact that man is all by himself, that there is no authority which gives meaning to life except man himself. … [ Read more ]

Author: Erich Fromm | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Insight, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior

When someone tells you they’re bored, it’s usually because they are boring.

Author: Unknown | Subjects: Insight, Psychology | Behavior

Most of the problems in life have two causes: we act without thinking or we think without acting.

Author: Unknown | Subjects: Insight, Life & Society

Circumstances do not make the man they reveal him.

Author: James Allen | Subjects: Insight, Life & Society

The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts while the stupid ones are full of confidence.

Author: Charles Bukowski | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Insight, Intelligence | Knowledge, Life & Society

Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.

Author: Daniel Kahneman | Subjects: Insight, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior

Violence is what happens when we don’t know what else to do with our suffering. Sometimes we aim that violence at ourselves … sometimes we aim that violence at other people.

Author: Parker J. Palmer | Subjects: Insight, Life & Society, Pain & Suffering, Psychology | Behavior