Finally finished "The Bed of Procrustes", Nassim Taleb's book of aphorisms. Here are my favorites:
“An idea starts to be interesting when you get scared of taking it to its logical conclusion.”
"To understand the liberating effect of asceticism, consider that losing all your fortune is much less painful than losing only half of it."
"Quite revealing of human preferences that more suicides come from shame or loss of financial and social status than medical diagnoses."
“'Wealthy' is meaningless and has no robust absolute measure; use instead the subtractive measure 'unwealth,' that is, the difference, at any point in time, between what you have and what you would like to have."
"I went to a happiness conference; researchers looked very unhappy."
"The difference between love and happiness is that those who talk about love tend to be in love , but those who talk about happiness tend to be not happy."
"People focus on role models ; it is more effective to find antimodels — people you don’t want to resemble when you grow up."
"The most depressing aspect of the lives of the couples you watch surreptitiously arguing in restaurants is that they are almost always unaware of the true subject of argument."
"Bureaucracy is a construction designed to maximize the distance between a decision-maker and the risks of the decision."
"The fool generalizes the particular ; the nerd particularizes the general ; some do both ; and the wise does neither."
"Anything people do , write , or say to enhance their status beyond what they give others shows like a mark on their foreheads , visible to others but not to them."
"True humility is when you can surprise yourself more than others ; the rest is either shyness or good marketing."
"They think that intelligence is about noticing things that are relevant (detecting patterns); in a complex world, intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant (avoiding false patterns ). In a conflict, the middle ground is least likely to be correct."
"It is easier to macrobullshit than to microbullshit."
"It takes some humanity to feel sympathy for those less fortunate than us; but it takes honor to avoid envying those who are much luckier."
"A happier world is one in which everyone realizes that 1) it is not what you tell people, it is how you say it that makes them feel bad; 2) it is not what you do to them but how you make them look that gets them angry."
"The general principle of antifragility: it is much better to do things you cannot explain than explain things you cannot do."
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