"The older Puritans trampled down all fleshy impulses; these newer Puritans trampled no less self-righteously upon the spiritual cravings."

-Olaf Stapledon in Last & First Men

Most people will be honest. And incorrect. Honest incorrectness isn’t the same thing as lying.

-Harry Dresden, from The Dresden Files

This exercise [meditation] isn't about getting rid of thoughts. It's more about learning to be at ease with them.

-Andy Puddicombe, founder of Headspace

Marxism..helped itself to the worst idea in the Christian Bible, a millenial cataclysm that will bring about a utopia

and restore prelapsarian innocence.  And it violently rejected the humanism and liberalism of the Enlightenment, which placed the autonomy and flourishing of individuals as the ultimate goal of political systems.
-Steven Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature

We can see the futility of art for art’s sake. But we should be open to art—for man’s sake.

Truman G. Madsen in The Highest in Us

You can't go on defending your patterns of reasoning forever. There comes a point where faith takes over.

Douglas Hofstadter, in Gödel, Escher, Bach

"We like to think that we value individuality, but all too often we admire one type of individual,"

--Susan Cain in Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking