Brian Sholis

- "But to listen is to act; of that, there’s no doubt. It takes effort and doesn’t happen by default."

* "[Writing] should feel like work rather than labor."

- “She advocates for temporal neutrality—a habit of mind that gives the past, the present, and the future equal weight.”

- "A dedication to the public domain demonstrates that the brand exists to contribute to culture, rather than extract from it."

- "To exist on platforms is to be subject to this kind of continual identity reconstitution, to fluidity. Self-branding attempts to hide this inevitability by claiming agency over it, as though by choosing to turn our identity into capital, it becomes a free choice. Self-obfuscation, on the other hand, effectively embraces it through a kind of... See more

* “The goal of my public engagement is a certain kind of open-mindedness, and that becomes impossible when all you ever think about is one thing — even if you call that thing “freedom of speech” or “liberal tolerance” or, for that matter, “open-mindedness.””

* “The mark of a great friend is somebody who believes in you, looks out for you, and has your best interests in mind. Those who give you honest feedback, even when the truth is hard to share and even harder to hear are worth their weight in gold. When you acknowledge their feedback, friends become like bumpers at a bowling alley. They let you... See more

- “They found that an ideal clock — one that ticks with perfect periodicity — would burn an infinite amount of energy and produce infinite entropy, which isn’t possible. Thus, the accuracy of clocks is fundamentally limited.”

- “When making decisions about life right now, we often apply different standards to ourselves than to other people—but, when we make decisions about our future selves, we use the same standards. Thinking about our future selves has even been shown to resemble third-person thinking at the neural level.”