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"People today think of the world as a uniquely dangerous place. It’s hard to follow the news without feeling a mounting dread of terrorist attacks, a clash of civilizations, and the use of weapons of mass destruction. But we often forget the dangers that filled the news a few decades ago and become blasé about the good fortune that so many of them have fizzled out."
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"Vigilance of the wisest kind is to incessantly remain open to the reality that what I 'see' is but a single thread and solitary shard of what 'is', for to assume otherwise is to surrender the wisdom of vigilance to the decay of ignorance."

"In our frenzied attempts to catch up with life, we run right past it. Once we have run past it, what we are in reality attempting to catch is ourselves."

"We act individually to collectively clean our communities."

"Not everyone around you are your friends or well wishers, Just be conscious."

"I wake up wondering if I know we're near mountains because of memory or because of something in the air."

"People spend their entire lives at those lower altitudes without any awareness that this high country exists."
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"One-on-one revenge was common in foraging societies, and kin-against-kin blood feuds were common in tribal societies that had not been pacified by a colonial or national government, particularly if they had an exaggerated culture of manly honor."


"Feminism as a movement for political and social equity is important, but feminism as an academic clique committed to eccentric doctrines about human nature is not. Eliminating discrimination against women is important, but believing that women and men are born with indistinguishable minds is not. Freedom of choice is important, but ensuring that women make up exactly 50 percent of all professions is not. And eliminating sexual assaults is important, but advancing the theory that rapists are doing their part in a vast male conspiracy is not."


"An ideology can provide a satisfying narrative that explains chaotic events and collective misfortunes in a way that flatters the virtue and competence of believers, while being vague or conspiratorial enough to withstand skeptical scrutiny."


"Reason is up to these demands because it is an open-ended combinatorial system, an engine for generating an unlimited number of new ideas. Once it is programmed with a basic self-interest and an ability to communicate with others, its own logic will impel it, in the fullness of time, to respect the interests of ever-increasing numbers of others. It is reason too that can always take note of the shortcomings of previous exercises of reasoning, and update and improve itself in response. And if you detect a flaw in this argument, it is reason that allows you to point it out and defend an alternative."


"Academics lack perspective. In a debate on whether the world is round, they would argue, 'No,' because it's an oblate spheroid. They suffer from 'the curse of knowledge': the inability to imagine what it's like not to know something that they know."


"We should expose whatever ends are harmful and whatever ideas are false, and not confuse the two."


"In the foreign country, we call the past, crucifixion was a common punishment. It was invented by the Persians, carried back to Europe by Alexander the Great, and widely used in Mediterranean empires."


"The Darwinian approach to sex is often attacked as being antifeminist, but that is just wrong. Indeed, the accusation is baffling on the face of it, especially to the many feminist women who have developed and tested the theory. The core of feminism is surely the goal of ending sexual discrimination and exploitation, an ethical and political position that is in no danger of being refuted by any foreseeable scientific theory or discovery."


"The great appeal of the doctrine that the mind is a blank slate is the simple mathematical fact that zero equals zero."
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