#ge

If the world were full of the self-seeking individuals found in economics textbooks, it would grind to a halt because we would be spending most of our time cheating, trying to catch the cheaters, and punishing the caught. The world works as it does only because people are not the totally self seeking agents that free-market economics believes them to be. We need to design an economic system that, while acknowledging that people are often selfish, exploits other human motives to the full and gets the best out of people. The likelihood is that, if we assume the worst about people, we will get the worst out of them. ↗

— Ha-Joon Chang

#economics #free-market #change

Energy is the universal language of Nature; Nature is the universal source of information. ↗

— Joey Lawsin

#information #language #nature #nature

The most self-damaging words in the English language are: try, might, and if. These are words of uncertainty. Will you fail? That is possible. But continue doubting your abilities and you’ll never succeed. ↗

— Dannika Dark

#ability #confidence #damaged #damaging #doubt

But I will find new habits, new thoughts, new rules. I will become something else. ↗

— Veronica Roth

#divergent #myself #rules

It is exactly the fear of revenge that motivates the deepest crimes, from the killing of the enemy's children lest they grow up to play their own part, to the erasure of the enemy's graveyards and holy places so that his hated name can be forgotten. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#crime #fear #graveyards #infanticide #murder

We'll choose knowledge no matter what, we'll maim ourselves in the process, we'll stick our hands into the flames for it if necessary. Curiosity is not our only motive; love or grief or despair or hatred is what drives us on. We'll spy relentlessly on the dead; we'll open their letters, we'll read their journals, we'll go through their trash, hoping for a hint, a final word, an explanation, from those who have deserted us--who've left us holding the bag, which is often a good deal emptier than we'd supposed. ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#knowledge #margaret-atwood #snooping #the-blind-assassin #love

I thought my heart was pure. We do like to have such good opinions of our own motives when we're about to do something harmful, to someone else. ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#revenge #motivational

One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive. ↗

— Hannah Arendt

#politics #politics-language #totalitarianism #motivational

Ardour in well-doing is a misleading and a treacherous thing. It cries out loudly for employment; you can't satisfy it at first; it wants more and more; it is eager to move mountains and divert the course of rivers. It isn't content till it perspires. And then, too often, when it feels the perspiration on its brow, it wearies all of a sudden and dies, without even putting itself to the trouble of saying, "I've had enough of this. ↗

— Arnold Bennett

#motivation #work #motivational

Wishing to prove oneself right is the usual motive for scholarship. ↗

— Robert Anton Wilson

#motivational