The major sin is the sin of being born. - Samuel Butler

a man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand.

There is no security against the ultimate development of mechanical consciousness, in the fact of machines possessing little consciousness now should provide small comfort. ...what will they not in the end become?

So engrained in the human heart is the desire to believe that some people really do know what they say they know, and can thus save them from the trouble of thinking for themselves, that in a short time would-be philosophers and faddists became more powerful than ever, and gradually led their countrymen to accept all those absurd views of life, some account of which I have given in my earlier chapters. Indeed I can see no hope for the Erewhonians till they have got to understand that reason uncorrected by instinct is as bad as instinct uncorrected by reason.