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“The standard explanation of the madness of crowds is ignorance: a mediocre education system has left the populace scientifically illiterate, at the mercy of their cognitive biases, and thus defenseless against airhead celebrities, cable-news gladiators, and other corruptions from popular culture.”
― Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

“I think that writing the villain or antagonist can be very challenging. This is especially true if you are trying to write from a very tight point of view. Kennit is an example of that. While I was writing Kennit, I had to believe all he believed, and feel justified in all he did. The flipside of that is that once you start to understand a character, you start to love them, despite or sometimes because of flaws and faults. You know why they are who they are, and you sympathize even as some part of you is horrified at their logic.”
― Robin Hobb

“Grit, persistence, adaptability, financial literacy, interview skills, human relationships, conversation, communication, managing technology, navigating conflicts, preparing healthy food, physical fitness, resilience, self-regulation, time management, basic psychology and mental health practices, arts, and music—all of these would help students and also make school seem much more relevant. Our fixation on college readiness leads our high school curricula toward purely academic subjects and away from life skills. The purpose of education should be to enable a citizen to live a good, positive, socially productive life independent of work.”
― Andrew Yang, The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future

“There can be no question of which was the greatest era for culture; the answer has to be today, until it is superseded by tomorrow.”
― Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress