Our systems, perhaps, are nothing more than an unconscious apology for our faults –a gigantic scaffolding whose object is to hide from us our favorite sin. – Henri Frederic Amiel

We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them. – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Poet at the Breakfast Table, 1872