Psyskeptic

“Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way. The enjoyments of life (such was now my theory) are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing, when they are taken en passant, without being made a principal object. Once make them so, and they are immediately felt to be insufficient. They will not bear a scrutinizing examination. Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life. Let your self-consciousness, your scrutiny, your self-interrogation, exhaust themselves on that; and if otherwise fortunately circumstanced you will inhale happiness with the air you breathe, without dwelling on it or thinking about it, without either forestalling it in imagination, or putting it to flight by fatal questioning.”
― John Stuart Mill, Autobiography

“Self-contemplation is a curse
That makes an old confusion worse.”
― Theodore Roethke

“The idea that people could get along fine with just markets, and no government, turned out to rest upon a version of what economists call the “compositional fallacy.”
― Joseph Heath, Economics Without Illusions: Debunking the Myths of Modern Capitalism

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.”
― Plutarch