80 Quotes by Robert Wright

The Buddha said anger has a “poisoned root and honeyed tip.

Being a person’s true friend means endorsing the untruths he holds dearest.

As Kurzban has summarized this finding, “We think we’re better than average at not being biased in thinking that we’re better than average.

Next time you see a yardful of sprouting dandelions, note that they look remarkably like things we call “flowers.” And later, when the flowers turn into fluff balls, look closely at one of those fluff balls and ask yourself whether it’s really so unattractive.

When monogamy is found in subsistence-level cultures, Alexander calls it “ecologically imposed.” When it appears in more affluent, more stratified cultures, he calls it “socially imposed.”3 The question is why society imposed it.

There is in the world today a great and mysterious force that shapes the fortunes of millions of people. It is called the stock market.

If you accept the idea that many of our most troublesome feelings are in one sense or another illusions, then meditation can be seen as, among other things, a process of dispelling illusions.

Certainly the prefrontal cortex is an important thing; I’m as proud of mine as the next guy.

The thirteenth-century Sufi poet Rumi is said to have written, “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.