Quotes from book

Everything Is Fucked

“Today’s tyranny is achieved by flooding people with so much diversion, so much bullshit information and frivolous distraction, that they are unable to make smart commitments.”

“The pursuit of happiness is more about the pursuit than the happiness.”

“Leaders need their followers to be perpetually dissatisfied; it’s good for the leadership business. If everything were perfect and great, there’d be no reason to follow anybody.”

“The pursuit of happiness is not only self-defeating but also impossible. It’s like trying to catch a carrot hanging by a string tied to a stick attached to your back.”

“Bad ideologies such as racism or sexism persist due to ignorance far more than malice.”

“The opposite of happiness is hopelessness, an endless gray horizon of resignation and indifference. It’s the belief that everything is fucked, so why do anything at all?”

“Hopelessness is the root of anxiety, mental illness, and depression. It is the source of all misery and the cause of all addiction.”

“The pursuit of happiness is a toxic value that has long defined our culture. It is self-defeating and misleading. Living well does not mean avoiding suffering; it means suffering for the right reasons. Because if we’re going to be forced to suffer by simply existing, we might as well learn how to suffer well.”

“Self-control is an illusion. It’s an illusion that occurs when both brains are aligned and pursuing the same course of action.”

“Freedom itself demands discomfort. It demands dissatisfaction. Because the freer a society becomes, the more each person will be forced to reckon and compromise with views and lifestyles and ideas that conflict with your own.”

“The only true form of freedom, the only ethical form of freedom, is through self-limitation. It is not the privilege of choosing everything you want in your life, but choosing what you will give up in your life.”

“You change the world not through some all-encompassing ideology or mass religious conversion or misplaced dreams of the future, but by achieving the maturation and dignity of each individual in the present, here and now.”

“Diversions come and go. Pleasure never lasts. Variety loses its meaning. But you will always be able to choose what you are willing to sacrifice, what you are willing to give up.”

“People, when left to their own devices, instinctively run away from pain and toward happiness. The problem then emerges when people achieve happiness: It’s never enough.”