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The things which had entirely filled my attention on that first occasion I now perceived to be temptations - temptations to escape from the central reality into a false, or at least imperfect and partial Nirvanas of beauty and mere knowledge.

—Aldous Huxley

It is easy to understand why even the most generous person might be averse to paying taxes: Our legislative process has been hostage to short-term political interests and other perverse incentives for as long as anyone can remember. Consequently, our government wastes an extraordinary amount of money. It also seems uncontroversial to say that whatever can be best accomplished in the private sector should be. Our tax code must also be reformed—and it might even be true that the income tax should be lowered on everyone, provided we find a better source of revenue to pay our bills. But I can’t imagine that anyone seriously believes that the current level of wealth inequality in the United States is good and worth maintaining, or that our government’s first priority should be to spare a privileged person like myself the slightest hardship as this once great nation falls into ruin.

—Sam Harris - A New Year’s Resolution for the Rich

(Source: The Huffington Post)

The sole means now for the saving of the beings of the planet Earth would be to implant again into their presences a new organ… of such properties that every one of these unfortunates during the process of existence should constantly sense and be cognisant of the inevitability of his own death as well as the death of everyone upon whom his eyes or attention rests. Only such a sensation and such a cognisance can now destroy the egoism completely crystallized in them.

—G. I. Gurdjieff

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

—Noam Chomsky (via illuminatedbeing)

It’s a rare person who actually changes anything significant about their personality straight out of anticonformity, or spite. Nobody, in an effort to avoid joining the crowd, changes their work ethic or religious beliefs — not for more than a couple of weeks anyway. That kind of change is hard.

—Christina H.

(Source: cracked.com)

A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.

—G.K. Chesterton

To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull facilities can comprehend only in the most primitive forms – this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the ranks of the devoutly religious men.

—Albert Einstein

The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.

—Albert Einstein

I measured my success by how full my wastebasket was. How many ideas I threw away meant that I was on the right track. If my wastebasket was empty, I wasn’t being creative.

—Albert Einstein