"Doubt is a disease that infects the mind creating a mistrust of peoples motives and ones own perceptions. Doubt has the ability to call into questions everything you ever believed about someone and reinforce the darkest suspicions of our inner circle."

"All you can do is involve yourself totally in your own life, your own moment, Lonzi said. And when we feel pessimism crouching on our shoulders like a stinking vulture, he said, we banish it, we smother it with optimism. We want, and our want kills doom."

"Ever since I was a small child, I've had this feeling - it's in my nature, and so it's not even pretentious - that if everyone's going one way, I will go the other, just by some kind of spirit of defiance."

"Convictions in our ideas is dangerous not only because it leaves us vulnerable to false positives, but also because it stops us from generating the requisite variety to reach our creative potential."