Ambition is the death of thought. - Elias Canetti

The touch to which one resigns oneself because all resistance appears hopeless – and particularly so as regards the future – has, in our society, become the arrest. The feel of the hand of authority on his shoulder is usually enough to make a man give himself up without having to be actually seized. He cowers and goes quietly.

You keep taking note of whatever confirms your ideas — better to write down what refutes and weakens them!

The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other very well.