If the Easter Islanders couldn't solve their milder local problems in the past, how can the modern world hope to solve its big global problems? People who get depressed at such thoughts often then ask me, “Jared, are you optimistic or pessimistic about the world’s future?” I answer, “I am a cautious optimist.” By that, I mean that, on the one hand, I acknowledge the seriousness of the problems facing us. If we don’t make a determined effort to solve them, and if we don’t succeed at that effort, the world as a whole within the next few decades will face a declining standard of living, or perhaps something worse. That’s the reason why I decided to devote most of my career efforts at this stage of my life to convincing people that our problems have to be taken seriously and won’t go away otherwise. On the other hand, we shall be able to solve our problems – if we choose to do so. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

In this initial illimitableness of possibilities that characterizes one who has no nature there stands out only one fixed, pre-established, and given line by which he may chart his course, only one limit: the past. History as a System

"In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of." The Analects of Confucius

Why count the days, when even one days is enough for a man to know all happiness? The Karamazov Brothers