Sublime

it’s just as hard to debate someone who is considered diabolical as someone considered divine, as almost anything they think or say is likely to be deemed either irrelevant or deeply profound.

even in Seneca’s age there were rascals who understood the art of suppressing merit by maliciously ignoring its existence, and of concealing good work from the public in order to favor the bad: it is an art well understood in our day, too, manifesting itself, both then and now, in an envious conspiracy of silence.

The scary thing about Asch’s conformity experiments is that you can get many people to say black is white, if you put them in a room full of other people saying the same thing. The hopeful thing about Asch’s conformity experiments is that a single dissenter tremendously drove down the rate of conformity, even if the dissenter was only giving a diff

Hui-neng says, “When ordinary people practice charity, they only think about how they look and their own happiness. But when their reward ends, they descend into the lower realms of existence. Through his great kindness, the Bhagavan teaches us to practice charity free of appearances and not to think about how we look or our own happiness but to br

As such, what is “obviously” hate speech or racism is sometimes more of a gray area or not even hate speech at all. In the movie Ghost World,

“You politicians sound off about humanity at the drop of a hat, but I can’t see humanity. I can only see individuals. I’m just one individual, an ordinary person, and I can’t take on the responsibility of saving all of humanity. I just want to live my own life.”

What important truth do very few people agree with you on?—is difficult to answer directly. It may be easier to start with a preliminary: what does everybody agree on? “Madness is rare in individuals—but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule,” Nietzsche wrote (before he went mad).

Emerson wrote in his famous essay “Gifts,” the “law of benefits is a dangerous channel.”