In a capitalist world, the word capital has taken on more and more uses. . . . human capital, for instance, which is what labor accumulates through education and work experience. Human capital differs from the classic kind in that you can't inherit it, and it can only be rented, not bought or sold.

Sad but true: individual intelligence probably peaked in the Upper Paleolithic, and we have been self-domesticated creatures ever since

Reincarnation is a story we tell; then in the end it's the story itself that is the reincarnation.

When Reinhold Messner returned from the first solo climb of Everest, he was severely dehydrated, and utterly exhausted; he fell down most of the last part of the descent, and collapsed on the Rongbuk glacier, and he was crawling over it on hands and knees when the woman who was his entire support team reached him; and he looked up at her out of a delirium, and said, “Where are all my friends?

Desire is life trying to continue to be life. All living things desire... Life is wanting.

Habits begin to form at the very first repetition. After that there is a tropism toward repetition, for the patterns involved are defenses , bulwarks against time and despair.

Historical analogy is the last refuge of people who can't grasp the current situation.