— Stevie Wonder from Superstition
When you believe in things
Your desires would diminish drastically if you didn’t need to impress anyone
—Derren Brown
You see, humans exist between two infinities … one of events stretching into the past … and one of events extending into the future. This is what our reason tells us. We have no insight into why things are this way. Or why we appeared when we did in this infinite chain … What we do in the face of this knowledge is what defines us … meaning starts here
— From a lecture by a philosophy professor as told in the book “How to think like a woman: Four women philosophers who taught me how to love the life of the mind
Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed
— Blaise Pascal
We cannot live in a world that is interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a hope. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening. To use our own voice. To see our own light.
— Hildegard of Bingen, 1098-1179, from book “How to Think Like a Woman – Four Women Philosophers Who Taught Me How to Love the Life of the mind” by Regan Penaluna
My wish for you, my friends, is that at the end of your days you will feel as much joy and gratitude as I do now
— Daniel Ellsberg (link)