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If there is a riddle here it’s this: why, after millennia of constructing and disassembling forms of hierarchy, did Homo sapiens – supposedly the wisest of apes – allow permanent and intractable systems of inequality to take root? Was this really a consequence of adopting agriculture? Of settling down in permanent villages and, later, towns?

— The dawn of everything : a new history of humanity by David Graeber, David Wengrow, David Graeber, and 1 other (Page 118 - 119)

Suddenly, a few of the more powerful European kingdoms found themselves in control of vast stretches of the globe, and European intellectuals found themselves exposed, not only to the civilizations of China and India but to a whole plethora of previously unimagined social, scientific and political ideas. The ultimate result of this flood of new ideas came to be known as the ‘Enlightenment’.

— The dawn of everything : a new history of humanity by David Graeber, David Wengrow, David Graeber, and 1 other (Page 29 - 692)

There is the security of knowing one has a statistically smaller chance of getting shot with an arrow. And then there’s the security of knowing that there are people in the world who will care deeply if one is.

— The dawn of everything : a new history of humanity by David Graeber, David Wengrow, David Graeber, and 1 other (Page 20 - 692)

Subjects’ unwillingness to deduce the particular from the general was matched only by their willingness to infer the general from the particular.

— Thinking, fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman (Page 174)

The principle of independent judgments (and decorrelated errors) has immediate applications for the conduct of meetings, an activity in which executives in organizations spend a great deal of their working days. A simple rule can help: before an issue is discussed, all members of the committee should be asked to write a very brief summary of their position. This procedure makes good use of the value of the diversity of knowledge and opinion in the group. The standard practice of open discussion gives too much weight to the opinions of those who speak early and assertively, causing others to line up behind them.

— Thinking, fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman (Page 85)

The general theme of these findings is that the idea of money primes individualism: a reluctance to be involved with others, to depend on others, or to accept demands from others. The psychologist who has done this remarkable research, Kathleen Vohs, has been laudably restrained in discussing the implications of her findings, leaving the task to her readers. Her experiments are profound—her findings suggest that living in a culture that surrounds us with reminders of money may shape our behavior and our attitudes in ways that we do not know about and of which we may not be proud.

— Thinking, fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman (Page 55)