According to Cosmic Variance (citing NPR), “40 percent of Amercians believe they will be in the top one percent of income earners by the time they die.” (Wow, there must be a lot of churn in that top 1 percent . . .)

Via John MacGowan:

I need not discredit philosophy by laborious criticism of its arguments. It will suffice if I show as a matter of history it fails to prove its pretension to be ‘objectively’ convincing. In fact it does so fail. I believe that the logical reason of man operates in this field of divinity exactly as it has always operated in love, or in patriotism, or in politics, or in any other of the wider affairs of life, in which our passions or our mystical intuitions fix our beliefs beforehand. It finds arguments for our convictions, for it has to find them. It amplifies and defines our faith, and dignifies it, and lends it words and plausibility. It hardly ever engenders it; it cannot now secure it.

— William James, Varieties of Religious Experience