David

“The known, our current story, protects us from the unknown, from chaos—which is to
say, provides our experience with determinate and predictable structure. Chaos has a
nature all of its own. That nature is experienced as affective valence, at first exposure, not
as objective property. If something unknown or unpredictable occurs, while we are
carrying out our motivated plans, we are first surprised. That surprise—which is a
combination of apprehension and curiosity—comprises our instinctive emotional
response to the occurrence of something we did not desire. The appearance of something
unexpected is proof that we do not know how to act—by definition, as it is the production
of what we want that we use as evidence for the integrity of our knowledge. If we are
somewhere we don’t know how to act, we are (probably) in trouble—we might learn
something new, but we are still in trouble.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief

“A man may persuade himself, by the most logical reasoning, that he will greatly benefit his health by swallowing live frogs; and, thus rationally convinced, he may swallow a first frog, then the second; but at the third his stomach will revolt. In the same way, the growing influence of the doctrine on my way of thinking came up against the resistance of my whole nature.”
― Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind

“Fate whispers to the warrior, 'You can not withstand the storm.'
The warrior whispers back, 'I am the storm.'
Unknown”
― Jake Remington

“Just as we all like love tales because there is an instinct of sex, we all like astonishing tales because they touch the nerve of the ancient instinct of astonishment. This is proved by the fact that when we are very young children we do not need fairy tales: we only need tales. Mere life is interesting enough. A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon. But a child of three is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door. Boys like romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales—because they find them romantic.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy