"This vulnerable center... makes life a long emergency that can be pacified by increasingly strenuous efforts to control experience. We are constantly modifying our experience to avoid discomfort." - Sam Harris

"We have to come to terms with the fact that our institutions religious and otherwise tend to ossify into these totalitarian structures... they're trying to point to something beyond that... but they degenerate and ossify.

But then we have to go underneath that too, if we're going to get our criticisms right, because as terrified as it's reasonable to be about religious sectarianism and totalitarianism, it's also necessary to remember that chimpanzees go on raiding parties and and kill the neighboring tribe. They're not motivated by religious concerns. To put that at the feet of religion, even implicitly... and I understand why that's an impulse, but it doesn't face the problem deeply enough, and it also obscures a potential solution." - Jordan Peterson

"In the Grand Inquisitor, Christ comes back to earth and he does some miracles and its the church itself who puts him in jail. The head of the church comes to Jail and says what the hell are you doing back here. The last thing we need is you. We know what's going on. We're going to put you to death tomorrow.

One of the things [Dostoevsky] was trying to point out was that despite the proclivity [of corruption] that you can lay at the feet of sectarian religion, the door is left open." - Jordan Peterson