Michael Lewis:

When you start your career you might think you are setting out to change the world, but the world is far more likely to change you. So watch yourself, because no one else will.

Mike Tyson:

I've learned that when people congratulate me, that's when I focus on my flaws. That way I don't allow my narcissism to fly sky-high and allow me to think that I can act out without any consequences.

David Brooks:

The tragedy of middle-aged fame is that the fullest glare of attention comes just when a person is most acutely aware of his own mediocrity.

Simon Critchley:

We always have to acknowledge that we might be mistaken. When we forget that, then we forget ourselves and the worst can happen.

Maciej Ceglowski:

'Big data' has this intoxicating effect. We start collecting it out of fear, but then it seduces us into thinking that it will give us power. In the end, it's just a mirror, reflecting whatever assumptions we approach it with.

Tim Cook:

I think that anyone that thinks they have it all down is not looking hard enough, not looking deep enough, or not raising the bar. From our point of view, we don't want to find zero issues. If we're finding zero issues, our bar is in the wrong place.

Andrew Solomon:

Most people imagine that resolving particular problems will make them happy. If only one had more money, or love, or success, then life would feel manageable. It can be devastating to realize the falseness of such tempered optimism. A great hope gets crushed every time someone reminds us that happiness can be neither assumed nor earned; that we are all prisoners of our own flawed brains; that the ultimate aloneness in each of us is, finally, inviolable.

Ta-Nehisi Coates:

That the enemy is us, is never easy to take.

Joan Didion:

Self-deception remains the most difficult deception.

Carl Sagan:

If we ever reach the point where we think we thoroughly understand who we are and where we came from, we will have failed.

Peter Beinart:

The wisest thinkers have reconciled the national desire to feel special with the knowledge that Americans are just as fallen as everyone else.

Joan Didion:

People with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things.