Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you’d like to like.
Author: Paul Graham | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
Cunning and deceit will serve a man better than force to rise from a base condition to great fortune.
Author: Machiavelli | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Success / Failure
Men in general live as much by appearances as by realities; indeed, they are often moved more by things as they appear than by things as they really are.
Author: Machiavelli | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior
When it is the persistent and universal tendency in any society to concentrate upon the intellect and its training, the result will be a society which amasses power, and with power the means to the good life, but which has no correspondingly developed capacity for living the good life for which it has amassed the means… We have immense power, and immense resources; we worship … [ Read more ]
Subjects: Concepts, Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge, Life & Society, Power, Sociology | Anthropology
The emotional life is not simply a part or an aspect of human life. It is not, as we so often think, subordinate, or subsidiary to the mind. It is the core and essence of human life. The intellect arises out of it, is rooted in it, draws its nourishment and sustenance from it, and is the subordinate partner in the human economy. This is … [ Read more ]
Author: John Macmurray | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior
In imagination we feel sure that it would be lovely to live with a full and rich awareness of the world. But in practice sensitiveness hurts. It is not possible to develop the capacity to see beauty without developing also the capacity to see ugliness, for they are the same capacity. The capacity for joy is also the capacity for pain. We soon find that … [ Read more ]
Author: John Macmurray | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Concepts, Life & Society, Pain & Suffering
Our existential predicament is that, governed by the reflex to spare ourselves pain, we blunt our sensitivity to life, thus impoverishing our creative vitality and our store of aliveness.
Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior
We suffer primarily because we are so insentient to our own emotions, so illiterate in reading ourselves.
Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Concepts, Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Pain & Suffering, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry
We feel our way through life, then rationalize our actions, as if emotion were a shameful scar on the countenance of reason. […] Our emotional lives [are] the root of our motives beneath the topsoil of reason and rationalization.
Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior
I think there are a number of reasons that looking at human beings as biological organisms can be unsettling. One of them is the possibility of inequality. If human nature is a “blank slate,” then by definition we’re all the same. Whereas if nature endows us with anything, then some people might be endowed with more of it than others are, or with different stuff … [ Read more ]
Author: Steven Pinker | Source: Discover Magazine | Subjects: Life & Society, Nature, Sociology | Anthropology
We can, with spiritual safety, rebel only in so far as we are personally sensitive to the claims of other individual lives that touch our own. The old herd-problem remains of how to live together; and as the union grows closer and more intricate the chances of mutual hurt are greater, and the sensitiveness must grow keener. Others are safe from and with us only … [ Read more ]
Author: Jane Ellen Harrison | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Relationships
Patriotism is collective herd-instinct; it is repressive of individuality. You feel strongly because you feel alike; you are reinforced by the other homogenous unites; you sing the same song and wave the same flag.
Author: Jane Ellen Harrison | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: International, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior
We are all, whatever part of the world we come from, persuaded that our own nation is superior to all others. Seeing that each nation has its characteristic merits and demerits, we adjust our standard of values so as to make out that the merits possessed by our nation are the really important ones, while its demerits are comparatively trivial. Here, again, the rational man … [ Read more ]
Author: Bertrand Russell | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: International, Life & Society
Our bodies are sublime, rebellious colonies of cells and our minds are floating, chameleon-like processes. This doesn’t mean that we should see human life as meaningless. Thinking we are exceptional is different from thinking our lives have meaning. There’s every reason to believe that our sense of significance is something we can’t do without. But the weighing of human significance is less a fact of … [ Read more ]
Author: Melanie Challenger | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior
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
We do not attract what we want, we attract what we are.
Author: James Lane Allen | Source: Better Humans | Subjects: Life & Society, Relationships
There may be a lot of truth to the terrible things that have happened, but those terrible things—you have to shut the door at some point and say, “I am my own man or woman, and I move forward… if you are somebody who uses other events as a reason to self-destruct, you’re ceding power.
Author: Julie Gurner | Subjects: Advice, Life & Society, Personal Improvement
You need to make a commitment to date the right people for the right reasons. This might mean staying single for longer, looking past some cosmetic imperfections, or seeing a movie or two with someone you might once have dismissed. But in the long run, it’s sure to give you a lot less heartache.
Author: Arthur C. Brooks | Source: The Atlantic | Subject: Relationships
The gap between knowing what you want and going after it is where fear thrives. You don’t need enough courage for the entire journey. You only need courage for the next step.
Author: Shane Parrish | Subjects: Advice, Fear, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
Sometimes it seems that it might be better to go back to those simpler days, that one might get more out of a less complex life. But it cannot be done. One changes with prosperity. We all think we should like to lead the simple life, and then we find that we have picked up a thousand little habits which we are quite unconscious of … [ Read more ]
Author: Harvey Firestone | Subjects: Experience, Life & Society, Personal Improvement