David

“While skepticism is often associated with nihilism and paralysis, Hume suggests that it actually tends to lead to inner tranquility, intellectual humility, and a passion for ever-further inquiry.”
― Dennis C. Rasmussen, The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought

“Amos was not merely an optimist. He willed himself to be an optimist because he had decided pessimism was stupid. "When you are a pessimist and the bad thing happens, you live it twice," Amos liked to say. "Once when you worry about it and the second time when it happens.”
― Michael Lewis, The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds

“Great Carthage drove three wars. After the first one it was still powerful. After the second one it was still inhabitable. After the third one it was no longer possible to find her.”
― Richard Miles, Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization

“There can be no question of which was the greatest era for culture; the answer has to be today, until it is superseded by tomorrow.”
― Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress