Jerry Seinfeld

Pain is knowledge rushing in very fast.

James Baldwin, "The Fire Next Time"

Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death—ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us.

John Maynard Keynes

I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.

Oscar Wilde, "Don't Forget to Sing in the Lifeboats"

If you don't get everything you want, think of the things you don't get that you don't want.

William Blake, "Nurse's Song" - Songs of Experience

Then come home, my children, the sun has gone down,
And the dews of night arise;
Your spring & your day are wasted in play,
And your winter and night in disguise.

David Foster Wallace - “This Is Water”

Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about "teaching you how to think" is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.