179 quotes
Ethical man accords his profession to his beliefs, instead of according his beliefs to his profession.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
An idea starts to be interesting when you get scared of taking it to its logical conclusion.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
You have a real life if and only if you do not compete with anyone in any of your pursuits.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
The weak shows his strength and hides his weaknesses; the magnificent exhibits his weaknesses like ornaments.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
The twentieth century was the bankruptcy of the social utopia; the twenty-first will be that of the technological one.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
Just as dyed hair makes older men less attractive, it is what you do to hide your weaknesses that makes them repugnant.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
A man is honorable in proportion to the personal risks he takes for his opinion.
Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012)
Social science means inventing a certain brand of human we can understand.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
The tragedy of virtue is that the more obvious, boring, unoriginal, and sermonizing the proverb, the harder it is to implement.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
Much of aging comes from a misunderstanding of the effect of comfort.
Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012)
You want to be yourself, idiosyncratic; the collective (school, rules, jobs, technology) wants you generic to the point of castration.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
What fools call “wasting time” is most often the best investment.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
Mental clarity is the child of courage, not the other way around.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
It takes extraordinary wisdom and self-control to accept that many things have a logic we do not understand that is smarter than our own.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
Intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
Procrastination is the soul rebelling against entrapment.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
When conflicted between two choices, take neither.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)
Older people are most beautiful when they have what is lacking in the young: poise, erudition, wisdom, phronesis, and this post-heroic absence of agitation.
The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)