A second realization of the ecomodernist movement is that industrialization has been good for humanity.8 It has fed billions, doubled life spans, slashed extreme poverty, and, by replacing muscle with machinery, made it easier to end slavery, emancipate women, and educate children (chapters 7, 15, and 17). It has allowed people to read at night, live where they want, stay warm in winter, see the world, and multiply human contact. Any costs in pollution and habitat loss have to be weighed against these gifts.

— Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now

For what I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.

— Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

…strive to hire people who are smarter than you and can replace you.

— Titus Winters, Tom Manshreck, and Hyrum Wright, Software Engineering at Google

All that we are is the result of all that we have thought. It is founded on thought. It is based on thought.

— Gautama Buddha, The Dhammapada

What matters isn’t what a person has or doesn’t have; it is what he or she is afraid of losing.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game