In the glorification of ‘work’ and the never-ceasing talk about the ‘blessing of labor’ I see . . . fear of everything individual. For at the sight of work—that is to say, severe toil from morning till night—we have the feeling that it is the best police, viz., that it holds everyone in check and effectively hinders the development of reason, of greed, and of desire for independence. For work uses up an extraordinary proportion of nervous force, withdrawing it from reflection, meditation, dreams, cares, love, and hatred

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak

If you think that the mere prospect of the end of the world is sufficient to change thinking in Washington and Moscow you clearly haven’t spent much time in either of those places.

— Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now

…our consciousness weaves a route at random along the ever-branching evolutionary pathway of the cosmos, so it is we, rather than God, who are playing dice.

— Paul Davies, Other Worlds

One big problem with our base-ten system of numbers is that it doesn’t have any relevance for cartoon characters. Most cartoon characters have only four fingers on each hand (or paw), so they prefer a number system that’s based on eight.

— Charles Petzold, Code

What if there is no way the world should be and no way the world shouldn’t be? What if the world just shows up the way the world shows up? What if the great opportunity of life isn’t in trying to get the world to be a certain way, but rather in learning from whatever the world gives us? What if curiosity and learning are really the big game, not being right about how things should be?

— Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Klemp, The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership