Utopias are a breeding ground for discord, violence, even genocide. P14
If you’re not following the blueprint of a docile, content citizen, the powers that be are happy to whip you into shape. Their tools of choice? Control, surveillance, and repression. P16
I’m heartened by our dissatisfaction, because dissatisfaction is a world away from indifference. The widespread nostalgia, the yearning for a past that never really was, suggests that we still have ideals, even if we have buried them alive. P19
According to the renowned economist Albert Hirschman, utopias are initially attacked on three grounds: futility (it’s not possible), danger (the risks are too great), and perversity (it will degenerate into dystopia). P42
In the end, only a fraction of our prosperity is due to our own exertions. We, the inhabitants of the Land of Plenty, are rich thanks to the institutions, the knowledge, and the social capital amassed for us by our forebears. This wealth belongs to us all. P46
That a president as recent and as conservative as Richard Nixon once sought to implement a basic income seems to have evaporated from the collective memory. P94
If you were the GDP , your ideal citizen would be a compulsive gambler with cancer who’s going through a drawn-out divorce that he copes with by popping fistfuls of Prozac and going berserk on Black Friday. P106