Human life is like walking into a movie halfway through, and having to walk out again two minutes later. You’ll have no idea what’s going on when you walk in. And chances are, just as you begin to get a clue, you’ll be kicked out. So unless you are lucky enough to walk in during a scene that is satisfying without any longer narrative context (think sex or violence), your ability to derive satisfaction from your two-minute glimpse will depend partly on your ability to construct meaning out of it.

— Venkatesh Rao, Crash Early, Crash Often

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

— Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy Of Right’

This is true of almost any physical object likely to be within reach of us at any given moment. Every one was grown or manufactured by someone on the basis of what someone imagined we might be like, and what they thought we might want or need. It’s even more true of abstractions like “capitalism,” “society,” or “the government.” They only exist because we produce them every day.

— David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs

…bias is not merely a source of error; it is a reliable pattern of error.

— Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape

Garbage collectors don’t “make a difference” in the sense that today’s young people are constantly encouraged to do. They will never be featured on a major media platform for their innovative contribution to society. But most of us are far removed from what it means to live in a filthy street and can hardly imagine what it would mean to rely on individual initiative to remove household waste.

— Zena Hitz, Lost in Thought