“From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice. I hope that you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty. Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time so that you don’t take friends for granted. I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either. And when you lose, as you will from time to time, I hope every now and then, your opponent will gloat over your failure. It is a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship. I hope you’ll be ignored so you know the importance of listening to others, and I hope you will have just enough pain to learn compassion. Whether I wish these things or not, they’re going to happen. And whether you benefit from them or not will depend upon your ability to see the message in your misfortunes.”
― The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure
― The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure
“The tendency to create powerful things with unintended consequences started not with the invention of the steam engine or AI but with the invention of religion. Prophets and theologians have summoned powerful spirits that were supposed to bring love and joy but occasionally ended up flooding the world with blood.”
― Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
― Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
“[Evolutionary selection pressures for general communication] explain why humans are peculiar in having our rather small irises set against a white background—the sclera—in our eyes. Anyone watching us can infer where we are looking or whom we are looking at. Experiments with apes and infants show that apes watch the orientation of the heads of others while human infants watch the eyes.”
― The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter
― The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter
“Experience, not information, is the key to emotional development.”
― The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
― The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
“Synchronous, face-to-face, physical interactions and rituals are a deep, ancient, and underappreciated part of human evolution.”
― The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
― The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
Heitor’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Heitor’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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