From 'Mobs, Messiahs and Markets'

"When you are born, you are full of life. It is all ahead of you: years of energy and excitement. But you use them up; you trade them off for experience, wisdom, money.

Little by little, day by day, year by year, your life gets used up, until you are all experience, all wisdom, all memories, and no life left. That is when your life is behind you ... and nothing is left in front.

We are, as Sophocles put it, nothing but a 'deathward going tribe,' after all." -- P.386

"...you have to be suspicious of what people say to you, even when they call them facts. More importantly, you have to be suspicious of what you say to yourself!

... the older we get, the less we know about anything; the more facts, opinions, and ideas we collect, the less sure we are of any of them.

Besides, we get more and more experience with facts that turn out not to be so."
-- P.384

"... in the modern western world, arranged marriages have given way to deranged ones.

People are expected to fall in love with each other-- that is, they are expected to take leave of their senses, and while in this addled state, they are not only allowed, but encouraged, to sign a contract that is meant to last a lifetime.

It is no wonder that half of them end up anting out of the deal. What is amazing is that the other half stick with it." -- P. 24