Worldviews are more a mental security blanket than a serious effort to understand the world

In daily life, reality gives us material incentives to restrain our irrationality. But what incentive do we have to think rationally about politics?

There are two sources of error: Either you lack sufficient data, or you fail to take advantage of the data that you have.

The best social insurance is to make more progress, not to make more work

Sociotropic voters with biased economic beliefs are more likely to produce severe political failures than are selfish voters with rational expectations.

If you can't feel secure - and teach your children to feel secure - about 1-in-610,000 nightmare scenarios - the problem isn't the world. It's you.

Let us designate anarchism1 anarchism as you define it. Let us desiginate anarchism2 anarchism as I and the American Heritage College Dictionary define it.

In Japanese and Italian, the response to ["How are you?"] is "I'm fine, and you?" In German it's answered with a sigh and a slight pause, followed by "Not so good.

Have the vision to create something wonderful, something that has true value forever.

In a person who is open to experience each stimulus is freely relayed through the nervous system, without being distorted by any process of defensiveness.

California is a state peculiarly addicted to swift enthusiasms. It is a seed-bed of all manner of cults and theories, taken up, and dropped, with equal speed.

A great piece of music is beautiful regardless of how it is performed.

Meanness is more in half-doing than in omitting acts of generosity.

The only way for us to help ourselves is to help others and to listen to each other's stories.

We go on dating from Cold Fridays and Great Snows; but a little colder Friday, or greater snow would put a period to man's existence on the globe.

The role of art in society differs for every artist.

Mind is just in the middle. You are nothing but a mess. If you can go beyond it, intelligence grows in you; if you go below it, any intelligence that you had disappears.