Some anthropologists who are extreme cultural relativists have argued that the laws of science as well as all the theorems of mathematics have no reality apart from human cultures. Laws about gravity, and the fact that 2 + 3 = 5, are not truths that transcend human minds. They are aspects of a culture’s folkways, like its traffic laws or its rules of etiquette.

— Martin Gardner, The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener

It seems that the relativists’ strategy of indexing moral truth to cultural norms saddles them with an ethics of authority despite themselves.

— Michael-John Turp, Who’s to Say?

I’m in favor of practical hope, provided that it doesn’t exist at the expense of whatever valid pessimism honesty may stipulate.

— Chad Trainer, The Monarchy of Fear

People invested in not knowing, not thinking about, certain things in order to have “the pleasure of sharing an attitude one knows is socially approved” will be ecstatic when their instinct for consensus is gratified—and wrathful when it is thwarted.

— Alan Jacobs, How to Think

Lack of money means discomfort, means squalid worries, means shortage of tobacco, means ever-present consciousness of failure—above all, it means loneliness.

— George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying