Feelings of inferiority are usually benign and amply justified; it’s feelings of superiority that are the menace.
Being
Identity, that spectator of what he calls himself,
That net and aggregate of energies in transient combination.
—Cunningham
We have been taught to find ourselves, to lose ourselves, to love ourselves, respect ourselves, forgive ourselves: only our selves are lacking.
Evils often cancel.
What makes people imagine that “the best we can do” is any good at all?
The less disposed we are to act on a belief, the more vehemently we defend it.
There is dumb happiness, as well as dumb misery, and one ought to aim, not at more of the former or less of the latter, but at a better class of both.
When Bentham designed the Panopticon, he did not anticipate so many volunteers.
You are not better than this. You are not worse than this. You are exactly this.
Natural selection surely favors a disposition to attribute success to factors under one’s control.
Everyone needs a reason to get up in the morning, and a drug habit is a compelling reason.