# Weisheit

"If the sun never set, we would have no perception of the vast depths of space, which become visible only at night when we are able to see what is obscured by the bright daylight."

"The epiphany machine will not discover anything about you that you do not, in some way, already know. But think for a moment about surprise. What is surprising is never what is revealed but the grace with which it has been hidden."

"A God out there and values out there, if they existed, would be utterly useless and unintelligible to us. There is nothing to be gained by nostalgia for the old objectivism, which was in any case used only to justify arrogance, tyranny, and cruelty. People [forget] ... How utterly hateful the old pre-humanitarianism world was."

"To be sure, I am not speaking about Christian equality, whose real name is equity; but about this democratic and social equality, which is nothing but the canonization of envy and the chimera of jealous ineptitude. This equality was never anything but a mask which could not become reality without the abolition of all merit and virtue."

"With a painter or a sculptor, one cannot begin to alter his works, but an architect has to put up with anything, because he makes utility objects - the building is there to be used, and times change."

"To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it."

"I joined the Pass Mods. Class and studied the cyropaedia and Livy's Wars with a resentful feeling that there was quite enough war in the world without having to read about it in Latin."

"The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were both justified by an appeal to the emancipation of women, and the discourse of feminism was specifically invoked."

"There's magic in stories, magic in hope, and magic in coming together. I have learnt from people's stories, been inspired by their hope, and been strengthened by their coming together."