Daniel Barrows

“... if we are to see the order of nature as a kind of story, then there has to be some kind of intelligence, some kind of wisdom, some kind of storyteller that makes it a story. There must be some kind of singer that sings this song. Not, of course, with our particular human, linguistic kind of intelligence and wisdom and singing, but with something analogous to these ... I want to appropriate the word "God" ... and use it to refer to the wisdom by which the world is a story, the singer by which nature is not just sound and fury but music. What I refer to as God is not any character in the drama of the universe but the author of the universe, the mystery of wisdom which we know of but cannot begin to understand, the wisdom that is the reason why there is a harmony called the universe which we can just stumblingly begin to understand. Our lives are a subplot in the story of the universe, but that story is not one we can comprehend, and it is one that often puzzles us and troubles us and sometimes outrages us. But it is a story. And I say this not because I have FAITH, or BELIEVE it, but simply because I cannot believe that existence is a tale told by an idiot. If I were to tell you what I believe, I would tell you much more. I would tell you that by the gift of faith I believe ... that the wisdom which made this drama so loved his human characters that he become one himself to share their lives; he chose to be a character in the story, to share their hopes and fears and suffering and death.”
― Herbert McCabe, Faith Within Reason

“Underlying or overall social mobility rates are much lower than those typically estimated by sociologists or economists. The intergenerational correlation in all societies for which we construct surname estimates - medieval England, modern England, the United States, India, Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Chile, and even egalitarian Sweden - is between 0.7 and 0.9, much higher than conventionally estimated. Social status is inherited as strongly as any biological trait, such as height.”
― Gregory Clark, The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility

“People often say my generation values authenticity. Reluctantly I will admit to being a member of my generation. If we value authenticity it’s because we’ve been bombarded since our impressionable preteen years with fakery”
― Lauren Oyler, Fake Accounts

“Ap Dijksterhuis and Loran Nordgren, have helped to answer this question with what they call a ‘theory of unconscious thought’. Their theory indicates that the more complex the problem, the more you should let your unconscious decide.”
― Jeremy Lent, The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe