Ryan Gate

“Whenever we try to improve things and fail, it is not because the spiteful (or unfathomably benevolent) gods are thwarting us or punishing us for trying, or because we have reached a limit on the capacity of reason to make improvements, or because it is best that we fail, but always because we did not know enough, in time.”
― David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

“Who was I, at my core? Was I primarily a schizophrenic? Did that illness define me? Or was it an “accident” of being—and only peripheral to me rather than the “essence” of me? It’s been my observation that mentally ill people struggle with these questions perhaps even more than those with serious physical illnesses, because mental illness involves your mind and your core self as well. A woman with cancer isn’t Cancer Woman; a man with heart disease isn’t Diseased Heart Guy; a teenager with a broken leg isn’t The Broken Leg Kid. But if, as our society seemed to suggest, good health was partly mind over matter, what hope did someone with a broken mind have?”
― Elyn R. Saks, The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness

“The Principle of Optimism
All evils are caused by insufficient knowledge.”
― David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

“knowledge has the unique ability to take aim at a distant target and utterly transform it while having scarcely any effect on the space between.”
― David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World