Carl

“Yet none of these things exists outside the stories that people invent and tell one another. There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws, and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Respect for Knowledge and Truth—Skeptics value reality and what is true. We therefore endeavor to be as reality-based as possible in our beliefs and opinions. This means subjecting all claims to a well-founded process of evaluation. Skeptics believe that the world is knowable because it follows certain rules, or laws of nature. The only legitimate method for knowing anything empirical about the universe follows this naturalistic assumption. In other words, within the realm of the empirical (factual knowledge based on evidence), you don’t get to invoke magic or the supernatural.”
― Steven Novella, The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe: How to Know What's Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake

“So, while we cannot trust the stories we are told, tradition, faith, convenient or reassuring narratives, charismatic figures, or even our own memories, we can slowly and carefully build a process by which to evaluate all claims to truth and knowledge. A big part of that process is science, which systematically tests our ideas against reality, using the most objective data possible. Science is still a messy and flawed process, but it is a process. It has, at least, the capacity for self-correction, to move our beliefs incrementally in the direction of reality. In essence, science is the process of making our best effort to know what’s really real.”
― Steven Novella, The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe: How to Know What's Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake

“No one should need to be big enough to destroy others and all of us must have to be powerful and resourceful enough to protect ourselves.”
― Zaman Ali, ZAMANISM Wealth of the People