On his deathbed in 1969, Dwight Eisenhower asked a friend about “my scientists” and said they were “one of the few groups that I encountered in Washington who seemed to be there to help the country and not help themselves.”

— Matthew Lyon and Katie Hafner, Where Wizards Stay Up Late

So, naturalists observe, a flea
Has smaller Fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite ‘em,
And so proceed ad infinitum.
This every poet, in his kind
Is bit by him that comes from behind

— Jonathan Swift, On Poetry, A Rhapsody

Voltaire said about God that ‘there is no God, but don’t tell that to my servant, lest he murder me at night’.

— Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens

It is necessary to renounce a freedom that does not exist, and to recognize a dependence of which we are not conscious.

— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.

— Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck