We are what we do, not what we think.  Only the interactions count.

Iain Banks, The Player of Games

Men get very fond of the things they defend, especially when they find themselves defending something stupid.


Theodore Sturgeon in his wonderful short story, The Widget, The Wadget, and Boff 

A man's worth is just the worth of that which he pursues....Be upright either by nature or by correction.

Contemplate the courses of the stars, as one should do that revolves along with them. Consider also without ceasing the changes of elements, one into another. Speculations upon such things cleanse away the filth of this earthly life.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Book 7)

Most worldly affairs are performed by themselves.

Montaigne

The virtue of the soul does not consist in flying high, but in walking orderly; its grandeur does not exercise itself in grandeur, but in mediocrity.

Montaigne

The internet reminds us on a daily basis that it is not at all rewarding to become aware of problems that you have no reasonable hope of solving.

Jia Tolentino, as quoted in the New York Review by Jonathan Lethem

The "good"... does not stand for anything that is empirically given.  It always grows out of an impasse, at a moment of indecision; thus it is always the product of a question: what is the good.


Bruno Snell on Socrates