Donato

“If you can look into the seeds of time And say which grain will grow and which will not, Speak, then, to me, who neither beg nor fear Your favors nor your hate.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“At some point in their education, most smart people usually learn not to credit arguments from authority. If someone says “Believe me about the minimum wage because I seem like a trustworthy guy,” most of them will have at least one neuron in their head that says “I should ask for some evidence”. If they’re really smart, they’ll use the magic words “peer-reviewed experimental studies.” But I worry that most smart people have not learned that a list of dozens of studies, several meta-analyses, hundreds of experts, and expert surveys showing almost all academics support your thesis– can still be bullshit.”
― Scott Alexander, Slate Star Codex Abridged

“They climbed back into the dish with brooms and scrubbing brushes and carefully swept it clean of what they referred to in a later paper as “white dielectric material,” or what is known more commonly as bird shit.”
― Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

“All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity are easy. Stay away from easy.”
― Scott Alexander