The true goal of the bourgeois life, in other words, is not self-enactment, but diversion. Most people need the organised distraction of work (if the… - John N. Gray

For a consistent naturalist science can only be a refinement of animal exploration, a practice humans have devised for finding their way in the bit of the universe in which they have so far survived. Instead of thinking of science as a law-seeking activity, we can think of it as a tool humans use to cope with a world they will never understand.

Humans kill one another – and in some cases themselves – for many reasons, but none is more human than the attempt to make sense of their lives. More than the loss of life, they fear loss of meaning.

The evil of totalitarianism is not only that it fails to protect specific liberties but that it extinguishes the very possibility of freedom.