First, philosophy concerns itself with all kinds of issues that don't get much airtime in day-to-day life. What's the nature of reality? Can we ever truly know anything, and if so, how? What does it mean to be a moral agent? And while we're at it, is there any such thing as agency anyway?
— Kathryn Schulz
We're terrified of not having the answers, and we would sometimes rather assert an incorrect answer than make our peace with the fact that we really don't know.
The kinds of things that we can make mistakes about are essentially unlimited in number.
If you want to live a life free of regret, there is an option open to you. It's called a lobotomy.
I can usually find my own way out of whatever dicey literary or linguistic situations I wander into, but I have to work much harder at the science.
Parading our own brilliance and exulting in other people's errors is not very nice. For that matter, even wanting to parade our own brilliance and exult in other people's errors is not very nice, although it is certainly very human.
The point isn't to live without any regrets. The point is to not hate ourselves for having them.
The miracle of your mind isn't that you can see the world as it is. It's that you can see the world as it isn't.
As a kid, I lived almost entirely inside books, and eventually the books started returning the favor. A lot of my internal world feels like an anthology, or a library. It's eclectic and disorganized, but I can browse in it, and that hugely shapes both what and how I write.
If it is sweet to be right, then - let's not deny it - it is downright savory to point out that someone else is wrong.
Regret doesn't remind us that we did badly. It reminds us that we know we can do better.
