…today’s educated workforce is full of philosophy or Renaissance literature majors who believe they are cut out for better things. They consider being a mere cog in administrative machinery beneath their dignity.

— David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs

The average behavior of the market participant will not allow us to understand the general behavior of the market.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game

Contrary to some people’s instincts, leaders who admit mistakes are more respected, not less.

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

…consciousness is nothing but the upper end of a spectrum of self-perception levels that brains automatically possess as a result of their design.

— Douglas R. Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop

What are great men? They are ordinary human beings who are ignorant and vain enough to accept responsibility for the life of society, individuals who would rather take the blame for all the cruelties, injustices, disasters justified in their name than recognise their own insignificance and impotence in the cosmic flow which pursues its course irrespective of their wills and ideals.

— Isaiah Berlin, Henry Hardy, and Michael Ignatieff, The Hedgehog and the Fox