Gray

“Every era puts invisible shackles on those who have lived through it, and I can only dance in my chains.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem

“They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence.”
― Tara Gentile, Quiet Power Strategy

“Sometimes I think the urge to believe in our own worldview is our most powerful intellectual imperative, the mind’s equivalent of feeding, fighting, and fornicating. People will eagerly twist facts into wholly unrecognizable shapes to fit them into existing suppositions. They’ll ignore the obvious, select the irrelevant, and spin it all into a tapestry of self-deception, solely to justify an idea, no matter how impoverished or self-destructive. And”
― Barry Eisler, Extremis

“is it fair to myself or others to assume these negative identities when what I'm really identifying is simply how I'm different? Of course not. And is it really an act of personal growth or self-improvement to set a goal to change these traits in favor of ones that conform to cultural expectations? Of course not—it's an act of personal violence and self-negation.”
― Tara McMullin, What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal Setting