849 Quotations Found

We are all addicted. Whether it’s drugs, alcohol, work, weight-loss programs, shopping, online videos, gossip, gambling, apps, comic books, at-home delivery, or new phones—anything, really, that the heart desires—we can’t seem to calm a relentless inner urge, a longing that will not be satisfied.

The least visible but perhaps most harmful addiction is thinking ourselves right. This particular form of cognitive dependency is something we may … [ Read more ]

Author: Mark Kingwell | Source: The Walrus | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

Trust works, in large measure, on assumptions about who people are, not just what they do before our eyes. We trust because we cannot observe and judge everything ourselves.

Author: Mark Kingwell | Source: The Walrus | Subjects: Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior, Relationships, Trust

The hottest commodity of today’s online cultural ecosystem is open conflict. Chitchat on podcasts and livestreams is transfixing because it’s unruly, argumentative, and unafraid of causing offense.

Author: Spencer Kornhaber | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Culture, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy

One big mistake people repeatedly make is focusing on proving themselves right, instead of focusing on achieving the best outcome. This is the wrong side of right.

Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Concepts, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior, Truth | Right | Wrong

Any energy that goes into what doesn’t matter comes at the expense of what does.

Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Productivity & Time Management, Success / Failure

There are more things … likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality. …some things torment us more than they ought; some torment us before they ought; and some torment us when they ought not to torment us at all. We are in the habit of exaggerating, or imagining, or anticipating, sorrow.

Author: Seneca | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

What we see is never raw reality, pure as spacetime — what we see is our interpretation of reality, filtered through the lens of our experience and our conditioned worldview. Always, the way we look at things shapes what we see; often, the lens we mistake for a magnifying glass turns out to be a warped mirror — we see others not as they are … [ Read more ]

Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Perception | Observation, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior, Relationships

We will lose everything we love, including our lives — so we might as well love without fear, for to fear a certainty is wasted energy that syphons life of aliveness.

Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Love, Personal Improvement, Relationships

In matters of style, swim with the current. In matters of principle, stand like a rock.

Author: Unknown | Subjects: Concepts, Ethics | Integrity | Morality, Life & Society, Personal Improvement

Always remember that to argue, and win, is to break down the reality of the person you are arguing against. It is painful to lose your reality, so be kind, even if you are right.

Author: Haruki Murakami | Subjects: Communication, Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Relationships, Thought | Inquiry

In fact, one of the recurrent themes in all [Joan] Didion’s books, both fiction and nonfiction, is Americans’ penchant for reinventing themselves, their belief in fresh starts and second acts — a faith, on the one hand, that helped settle this country and fueled the American dream, and yet, on the other, has resulted in rootlessness and anomie, the discarding of personal and public history. … [ Read more ]

Author: Michiko Kakutani | Source: The New York Times | Subjects: America, International, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy

The willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life is the source from which self-respect springs.

Author: Joan Didion | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement

Destiny helps people believe there is an order to this horseshit. There isn’t.

Author: The Witcher | Subjects: Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior

There is nothing like a higher purpose to allow men to do the unthinkable.

Author: The Witcher | Subjects: Concepts, Life & Society, Meaning, Psychology | Behavior

Uncertainty is the price of beauty, and integrity the only compass for the territory of uncertainty that constitutes the landmass of any given life. And so the best we can do is walk step by next intuitively right step until one day, pausing to catch our breath, we turn around and gasp at a path. If we have been lucky enough, if we have been … [ Read more ]

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

Superstitious thought, or “magical thinking,” even as it misrepresents reality, has its advantages. It offers psychological benefits that logic and science can’t always provide: namely, a sense of control and a sense of meaning. Consider one “law of magic” that people tend to put stock in: the idea that “luck is in your hands,” that you can affect your fate via superstitious rituals like knocking … [ Read more ]

Author: Matthew Hutson | Source: The New York Times | Subjects: Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost … [ Read more ]

Author: Carl Sagan | Source: Goodreads | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Math & Science, Politics & Public Policy

Nomadic society is always more equitable, more egalitarian than sedentary, agricultural society, where you can accumulate wealth and pass it on through generations. The beginnings of class structure start with agriculture.

Author: Sebastian Junger | Source: Vox | Subjects: Economics | Economy, Life & Society, Material Possessions

I’ve always thought of freedom as an activity, not a condition. There’s a tendency, especially in our culture, to think of freedom as “freedom from.” To be free is to not be tyrannized by some outside power, and that’s fine, but it’s incomplete. You can be free of tyranny, but if you’re destitute, if you’re abandoned, if you don’t have agency because your most immediate … [ Read more ]

Author: Sean Illing | Source: Vox | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy

Conservatives are concerned with an outside threat, and liberals, they’re much less worried about outsiders. In fact, they’re often quite open to them culturally. What they’re worried about is internal unfairness. If you take those two concerns and you marry them together in one society, you have a society that can both protect itself and run a fairly equitable system. Either one by itself wouldn’t … [ Read more ]

Author: Sebastian Junger | Source: Vox | Subjects: Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy