Marklandman

“engineering desire, is the approach of Silicon Valley, authoritarian governments, and the Cult of Experts. The first two use intelligence and data to centrally plan a system in which people want things that other people want them to want -- things that benefit a certain group of people. This approach poses a serious threat to human agency. It also lacks respect for the capability of people to freely desire what is best for themselves and for the people they love.”
― Luke Burgis, Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life

“While we fight for equality in the areas that do matter: for fundamental human and civil rights, or for the freedom for each person to pursue their thick desires (in the United States, this is called "the pursuit of happiness"); we also begin fighting for equality in areas that do not matter, our thing desires: to make as much money as someone else, to have the same number of Instagram followers, to have the same amount of status or respect or professional prestige as any one of the nearly eight billion models on the planet.”
― Luke Burgis, Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life

“Bodily vigor is good, and vigor of intellect is even better, but far above both is character. It is true, of course, that a genius may, on certain lines, do more than a brave and manly fellow who is not a genius; and so, in sports, vast physical strength may overcome weakness, even though the puny body may have in it the heart of a lion. But, in the long run, in the great battle of life, no brilliancy of intellect, no perfection of bodily development, will count when weighed in the balance against that assemblage of virtues, active and passive, of moral qualities, which we group together under the name of character.”
― Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life

“I think he is well aware of his powers, but I also think this knowledge is tempered by a sense of humility and selflessness such as I have seen in few strong men.”
― Ryan Holiday Stephen Hanselman