“Italian cities have long been held up as ideals, not least by New Yorkers and Londoners enthralled by the ways their architecture gives beauty and meaning to everyday acts.”

On the September 11 attacks, as quoted in "An appalling magic" in The Guardian (17 May 2003).
2003
Context: If Chicago had been hit, I assure you New Yorkers would not have cared. What was stunning when New York was hit was how the rest of America rushed to New York's defense. New Yorkers would have been like, "It's tough for them; now let's go back to our Calvin Klein fashion shows."

[Scott Adams talks to Naval Ravikant, YouTube, 8 May 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu4RkmUIfR4] (55:42 of 56:02)

Expletives Deleted: Selected Writings (1992).

Variant translation: I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves — such an ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine. The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Without the sense of fellowship with men of like mind, of preoccupation with the objective, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific research, life would have seemed to me empty. The ordinary objects of human endeavor — property, outward success, luxury — have always seemed to me contemptible.
1930s, Mein Weltbild (My World-view) (1931)
Context: I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves — this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts — possessions, outward success, luxury — have always seemed to me contemptible.

Televised interview broadcast the day before Laguna Heat was shown on cable TV.

"Five Thousand Years Later"
Seveneves (2015), Part Three

Source: The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981), Chapter 3, From Evolution To Ethics?, p. 69

Fyodor Dostoevsky in a letter to his Niece Sofia Alexandrovna, Geneva, January 1, 1868. Ethel Golburn Mayne (1879), Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoyevsky to His Family and Friends http://www.archive.org/stream/lettersoffyodorm00dostiala/lettersoffyodorm00dostiala_djvu.txt, Dostoevsky's Letters XXXIX, p. 136.

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 10, Brooklynites Natural-Born Hayseeds