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

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