Every so often, I read a quote that gets me thinking very deeply or just strikes a cord in me that I don’t fully understand. So, I thought it would be a cool idea to collect these quotes somewhere.

“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, ‘It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.’ It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: ‘if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?’ There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.

Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.” 
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“If the human population doubled every generation — every twenty years, as opposed to every thirty-five — the entire universe would be converted into a solid mass of human protoplasm in less than two thousand years.” – Daniel Quinn, My Ishmael

“The sense of alienation felt by many people who live in modern market economies makes sense. People are often dissatisfied with the feeling of anonymity engendered by formal institutions and bureaucracies. If your life is full of explicit and conditional exchanges with strangers that occur at a frequency and volume absent in our species’ evolutionary past, it might well make you miserable. Our species’ evolved psychology reads these exchanges as markers of how superficially, even meaninglessly, we are engaged with the people around us and how vulnerable we might be to a sudden reversal of fortune. Without friends, we feel naked.” – Nicholas A. Christakis, Blueprint

“You have to love yourself because no amount of love from others is sufficient to fill the yearning that your soul requires from you.” ― Dodinsky

“But remember, every time you judge someone you are punishing that person for not following agreements they never made.” – Miguel Ruiz, Mastery of Self: A Toltec Guide to Personal Freedom

“The path isn’t a straight line; it’s a spiral. You continually come back to things you thought you understood and see deeper truths.” – Barry H. Gillespie

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead

“The pursuit of an easier life resulted in much hardship, and not for the last time. It happens to us today. How many young college graduates have taken demanding jobs in high-powered firms, vowing that they will work hard to earn money that will enable them to retire and pursue their real interests when they are thirty-five? But by the time they reach that age, they have large mortgages, children to school, houses in the suburbs that necessitate at least two cars per family, and a sense that life is not worth living without really good wine and expensive holidays abroad. What are they supposed to do, go back to digging up roots? No, they double their efforts and keep slaving away.” – Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens

“Doing nothing to change the structures of power that benefit you is just as bad as being part of the mechanism that keeps those structures in place” – Clementine Ford, Fight Like a Girl