Abundance, even of good things, prevents them from being valued; and scarcity, even in the case of what is bad, confers a certain value. Don Quixote

It is impossible for anyone to begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows. Discourses

The habit of paying compliments kept a man's tongue oiled without any expense. The Old Curiosity Shop

Religious values tend to be especially deeply held and hence frequent cause of disastrous behaviour. [...] The modern world provides us with abundant secular examples of admirable values to which we cling under conditions where those values no longer make sense [...] It appears to me that much of the rigid opposition to environmental concerns in the First World nowadays involves values acquired early in life and never again reexamined [...]. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed