You can't perceive an opportunity

You can't perceive an opportunity without first acknowledging a fault.

The existential vacuum (Frankl)

The existential vacuum is a widespread phenomenon of the twentieth century. This is understandable; it may be due to a twofold loss which man has had to undergo since he became a truly human being. At the beginning of human history, man lost some of the basic animal instincts in which an animal's behavior is imbedded and by which it is secured. Such security, like Paradise, is closed to man forever; man has to make choices. In addition to this, however, man has suffered another loss in his more recent development inasmuch as the traditions which buttressed his behavior are now rapidly diminishing. No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism).

Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search For Meaning

Unfamiliar words

Unfamiliar words can initiate unfamiliar thoughts.

The most important thing about democracy

The most important thing about democracy is not that it safeguards the normal, the mundane, the trivial, but that it allows the excellent to more readily emerge by challenging it with the least resistance.

Rush's Rule of Discriminatory Homeopathy

Rush's Rule of Discriminatory Homeopathy: Exposure to a single superior exemplar of any category can cause one to appreciate and approve even mediocre representatives of the same category in the future, even in cases where they were eschewed in the past.

A writer struggles

A writer struggles to intensify the reader's struggle, not necessarily to clarify it.

Enlightenment doesn't

Enlightenment doesn't equip one to live more successfully in the world; it only transcends the illusions of mind.