Progress is more of a challenge for the cynic but also more important and urgent, since for the optimist things aren't that bad and are bound to get better anyway.

When you try to cool down hot emotions, what tends to happen is that you end up either repressing them or losing them altogether. Neither is desirable. Without emotion, much social interaction loses its meaning, or changes for the worse.

True humility is expressed in deeds, not words. The humble are those who truly walk the same ground as everyone else - not necessarily with grovelling, hunched backs, but certainly not lording it over others, either.

Real life is about accepting ups and downs, the good and the bad, the possibility of failure as well as the ambition to succeed. Atheism speaks to the truth about our human nature because it recognizes all this and does not seek to shield us from the truth by myth and superstition

To become a stoic is to endorse the truthfulness of its world view and accept its prescription for how you ought to live, not just to like how it makes you feel.

Philosophy has to be enquiring; it can take nothing on faith, and its methods are based not on the blind acceptance of authority, but on establishing truths by reason and argument.

Metaphorical tone deafness is when people are unable to discern what is of value in something. I think I'm tone deaf to poetry, for instance. Despite having studied it into a second year of university, most of it just leaves me cold.