In any case civilisation has made mankind if not more bloodthirsty, at least more vilely, more loathsomely bloodthirsty. In old days he saw justice in bloodshed and with his conscience at peace exterminated those he thought proper. Now we do think bloodshed abominable and yet we engage in this…

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes From the Underground

…in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, there was a tacit understanding in much of the industrialized world that if productivity in a certain enterprise improved, a certain share of the increased profits would be redistributed to the workers in the form of improved wages and benefits. Since the eighties, this is no longer the case.

— David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs

…while knowledge is increasingly open-source, ignorance is, too.

— Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape

Waste not your life in a world devoid of taste, which contains God but not the Devil

— Payam-e-Mashriq, Paradise

Stay interested in life, whoever you are, for that is the best that you can reasonably hope for from it – even while you know that, ultimately speaking, life is not interested in you…

— Grant Bartley, The Last Thought