Further Selected Quotes

Eliezer Yudkowsky used to run a series of "Rationality Quotes" on OvercomingBias / LessWrong back in 2008-9. Here are some of my personal favorites.

"In The Brothers Karamazov, Alyosha expresses the idea which panicked Dostoyevski more than any other: Without God, 'everything is lawful'. But as Mohammed Atta can explain, the opposite is true. Without God, murder is forbidden by human law; it is only for those acting on behalf of God, that everything is permitted."

-- Jonathan Wallace (source)

"People can't predict how long they will be happy with recently acquired objects, how long their marriages will last, how their new jobs will turn out, yet it's subatomic particles that they cite as "limits of prediction." They're ignoring a mammoth standing in front of them in favor of matter even a microscope would not allow them to see."

-- Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan

"Faced with the choice of changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof."

-- John Kenneth Galbraith

"The fact that we can become accustomed to anything, however disgusting at first, makes it necessary to examine carefully everything we have become accustomed to."

-- George Bernard Shaw

"The fact that I beat a drum has nothing to do with the fact that I do theoretical physics. Theoretical physics is a human endeavour, one of the higher developments of human beings — and this perpetual desire to prove that people who do it are human by showing that they do other things that a few other humans do (like playing bongo drums) is insulting to me. I am human enough to tell you to go to hell."

-- Richard Feynman

" 'Ethical consideration' has come to mean reasoning from an ivory tower about abstract non-issues while people die."

-- Zeb Haradon

"There's no difference between a pessimist who says, 'Oh, it's hopeless, so don't bother doing anything,' and an optimist who says, 'Don't bother doing anything, it's going to turn out fine anyway.'  Either way, nothing happens."

-- Yvon Chouinard

"People want to think there is some huge conspiracy run by evil geniuses.  The reality is actually much more horrifying.  The people running the show aren't evil geniuses.  They are just as stupid as the rest of us."

-- Vaksel (source)

"I can't imagine a more complete and precise answer to the question 'for what reason...?' than 'none'.  The fact that you don't like the answer is your problem, not the universe's."

-- Lee Daniel Crocker

"Now Charlie, don't forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he wished for." "What?" "He lived happily ever after."

-- Roald Dahl, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

See also the quotes I shared a while ago here.