Life’s a struggle. It’s the people who get us through.

@Bob Lefsetz

A Cree Indian prophecy, remembered by a man thinking about the effects of the BP oil spill:

Only after the last tree has been cut down… Only after the last river has been poisoned… Only after the last fish has been caught, only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.

@CNN iReport Blog

Thomas Sowell talking about letting politicians decide you have enough money:

Once you buy the argument that some segment of the citizenry should lose their rights, just because they are envied or resented, you are putting your own rights in jeopardy — quite aside from undermining any moral basis for respecting anybody’s rights. You are opening the floodgates to arbitrary power. And once you open the floodgates, you can’t tell the water where to go.

@Thomas Sowell

Jonah Lehrer, talking about how we think some new scientific tool or discovery will reveal the simple clock-like structure underlying a phenomenon but instead reveals the phenomenon to be even more complex and less clock-like than we originally thought:

This same story plays out over and over — only the nouns change.

@Jonah Lehrer | Breaking Things Down to Particles Blinds Scientists to Big Picture

From the The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, Jonathan Haidt on the pleasure of success:

The final moment of success is often no more thrilling than the relief of taking off a heavy backpack at the end of a long hike. If you went on the hike only to feel that pleasure, you are a fool.

Professor Paul Cantor:

A static perfection is a bad ideal for humanity, and attempts to impose an artificial order on the world only succeed in creating greater disorder.

Read the rest of the interview @Mises Economics Blog.

The law of money & complexity: an artist needs 20 followers to survive, a writer 20,000, a newspaper 300,000; a tv station, a million. @alaindebotton

Technology’s double punishment is to make us both age prematurely and live longer. @nntaleb

The capacity to feel grateful seems linked to a readiness to acknowledge one’s vulnerability. @alaindebotton

Wisdom of religions in their insistence that we schedule moments for gratitude, self-examination, forgiveness. Whim won’t do it. @alaindebotton

The reason to travel: there are inner transitions we can’t properly cement without a change of locations. @alaindebotton

Readiness to answer all questions is the infallible sign of stupidity.

Saul Bellow, via Marginalia, no.116 « The New Psalmanazar

The only reliably shocking stance now is to be traditional. @alaindebotton

Übermen tolerate others’ small inconsistencies though not the large ones;losers tolerate others’ large inconsistencies though not small ones. @nntaleb

You can tell the size of a person, by the size of the problem it takes to get them upset. @CoachDeb