2099 Quotations Found

William Swann, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, coined the term [identity fusion] in 2009 while studying theories of individual identity. Once fused with a group or leader, he noticed, followers seem tied to them in such a way that things are true because the leader said them. Dystopian as that may seem, it can be a coping mechanism: Orienting your sense … [ Read more ]

Author: James Hamblin | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Psychology | Behavior, Sociology | Anthropology

How do people end up going along with corruption if their company is carrying out some kind of scam? The studies show that it’s always a step-by-step process. You accept one aspect of it: “Well, everybody else is keeping double books, so I can, too. That’s just what people do in this company, and it’s normal.” And then the next step is: “I’ll do this … [ Read more ]

Author: Anne Applebaum | Source: Vox | Subject: Articles & Links

There is one sentiment, I think, that links the people who were once part of the center-right — the anti-communist movement in Poland or Reaganism or Thatcherism — and who began to change in a different direction over the past decade or so: disappointment.

These are very often people who are disappointed, and they are almost always disappointed with their society. Whether it’s the superficiality … [ Read more ]

Author: Anne Applebaum | Source: Vox | Subjects: Politics & Public Policy, Sociology | Anthropology

At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people significantly, especially when they are relatively young, simply by suggesting they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind. It costs you relatively little to do this, but the benefit to them, and to the broader world, may be enormous.

Author: Tyler Cowen | Subjects: Communication, Education | Scholarship, Personal Improvement

We find comfort among those who agree with us, and growth among those who don’t.

Author: Frank A. Clark | Subjects: Concepts, Education | Scholarship, Personal Improvement, Wisdom

To want what you want so fiercely, to love it so absolutely, is not a personal indulgence in hubris or delusion — it is the mightiest antidote to the terrors of being alive and, in consequence, the fuel for your most generous contribution to the world.

Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subject: Psychology | Behavior

It is by wanting that we orient ourselves in the world, by finding and following our private North Star that we walk the path of becoming. To become, of course, is no easy task — to become, that is, what you yourself desire to be, without mistaking your culture’s or your idols’ or your lover’s desires for your own.

Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subject: Personal Improvement

The lives we live are bridges across the immense river of possibility, suspended by two pylons: what we want and what we make. In an ideal life — a life of purpose and deep fulfillment — the gulf of being closes and the pylons converge: We make what we want to see exist.

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

Desire is a two headed snake. On one end, it cultivates anticipation and on the other it cultivates fear. Positive outcomes build anticipation and negative outcomes build fear from desire. Some people are attached to the high of anticipation and some are attached to the lows of fear. In both cases, reality slips by unnoticed in the background.

Author: Abhinav (Specks) | Source: Medium | Subjects: Desires, Psychology | Behavior

It’s worth thinking about language for a moment, because one thing it reveals, probably better than any other example, is that there is a basic paradox in our very idea of freedom. On the one hand, rules are by their nature constraining. Speech codes, rules of etiquette, and grammatical rules, all have the effect of limiting what we can and cannot say. On the other … [ Read more ]

Author: David Graeber | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Language

When we look at a representation of reality, we can choose to either see it as descriptive or as prescriptive. Descriptions teach us, but they also give us room to innovate. Prescriptions can get us stuck.

Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Concepts, Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge, Personal Improvement

In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

Author: Bertrand Russell | Subjects: Concepts, Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge, Personal Improvement

It is preoccupation with possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly.

Author: Bertrand Russell | Subjects: Consumerism, Life & Society, Material Possessions, Personal Improvement

One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.

Author: Bertrand Russell | Subjects: Concepts, Intelligence | Knowledge, Personal Improvement

Knowledge is good and ignorance is evil: to this principle the lover of the world can admit no exception. Nor is it power in and for itself that is the source of danger. What is dangerous is power wielded for the sake of power, not power wielded for the sake of genuine good.

Author: Bertrand Russell | Subjects: Concepts, Insight, Intelligence | Knowledge, Life & Society, Power

It is only in so far as we renounce the world as its lovers that we can conquer it as its technicians. But this division in the soul is fatal to what is best in man.

Author: Bertrand Russell | Subjects: Environment | Sustainability, Insight, Life & Society

Step by step, as science has developed, the impulse of love which gave it birth has been increasingly thwarted, while the impulse of power, which was at first a mere camp-follower, has gradually usurped command in virtue of its unforeseen success. The lover of nature has been baffled, the tyrant over nature has been rewarded.

Author: Bertrand Russell | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Math & Science

We may seek knowledge of an object because we love the object or because we wish to have power over it. The former impulse leads to the kind of knowledge that is contemplative, the latter to the kind that is practical.

Author: Bertrand Russell | Subjects: Concepts, Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge, Personal Improvement

There are some people who, when their past is threatened, get frightened of losing everything they thought they had, and perhaps everything they thought they were as well.

Author: John le Carré | Source: The Atlantic | Subject: Psychology | Behavior

The untrained mind has a weird way of defaulting to serial activities — i.e. I’ll do this after you do that after X, Y, Z happens. You want people working in parallel instead.

Author: Dave Girouard | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Productivity & Time Management, Psychology | Behavior