…mere instruction in probability fails to provide lifetime immunity to statistical fallacies. Students forget it as soon as the exam is over and they sell their textbooks, and even when they remember the material, almost no one makes the leap from abstract principles to everyday pitfalls.

— Steven Pinker, Rationality

People can only be social friends if they don’t try to upstage or outsmart one another.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game

If you think it’s simply enough to take advantage of the opportunities that arise in your life, you will fall short of greatness. Anyone sentient can do that. What you must do is learn how to press forward precisely when everyone around you sees disaster.

— Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way

The finite and limited character of human existence is more primordial than man himself

— Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

…a soapbox orator addresses a crowd on the glories of communism: “Come the revolution, everyone will eat strawberries and cream!” A man at the front whimpers, “But I don’t like strawberries and cream.” The speaker thunders, “Come the revolution, you will like strawberries and cream!”

— Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now