To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

…we can only become what we strive for.

— Francis Su, Mathematics for Human Flourishing

Identifying with a tribe is a very strong emotional force. People will die for it. And once you get people to identify with a tribe, the beliefs which are attire of that tribe will be spoken with the full passion of belonging to that tribe.

— Eliezer Yudkowsky, Map and Territory

our opinion is the only thing that is truly ours and for which we are completely responsible. Everything else in our lives may be affected by fortune; but the buck stops with us when it comes to our considered judgments and intentions.

— Massimo Pigliucci, How to Live a Happy Life, With Seneca

Further investigation of self-organizing systems reveals that the divine creator, if there is one, does not have to produce evolutionary miracles. He, she, or it just has to write marvelously clever rules for self-organization.

— Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems