José Ortega y Gasset’s Revolt of the Masses—is that education may not keep pace with extensions of the franchise, that ignorant voting will substitute a rule by boobs for a rule by the wise. Uneducated masses, Thomas Hobbes reminded us, are as easily influenced by the flummery and flattery of politicians as any ruler is influenced by similar tactics on the part of advisors.

— Martin Gardner, The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener

But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it.

— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty and Other Essays

It sometimes feels like we have nothing left to give, and yet, in those dark and desperate moments, we find that if we just keep putting one foot in front of the other, there is a way to accomplish what all reason seems to argue against.

— Angela Duckworth, Grit

…it is impossible and would be unjust to love the soul of a person in the abstract and for whatever qualities might be therein.

— Luc Ferry, A Brief History of Thought

Academia has a tendency, when unchecked (from lack of skin in the game), to evolve into a ritualistic self-referential publishing game.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game