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Every aphorism here is about a Procrustean bed of sorts—we humans, facing limits of knowledge, and things we do not observe, the unseen and the unknown, resolve the tension by squeezing life and the world into crisp commoditized ideas, reductive categories, specific vocabularies, and prepackaged narratives, which, on the occasion, has explosive consequences. Further, we seem unaware of this backward fitting, much like tailors who take great pride in delivering the perfectly fitting suit—but do so by surgically altering the limbs of their customers.
For instance, few realize that we are changing the brains of schoolchildren through medication in order to make them adjust to the curriculum, rather than the reverse.
The person you are the most afraid to contradict is yourself.
An idea starts to be interesting when you get scared of taking it to its logical conclusion.
People are much less interested in what you are trying to show them than in what you are trying to hide.
Pharmaceutical companies are better at inventing diseases that match existing drugs, rather than inventing drugs to match existing diseases.
To understand the liberating effect of asceticism, consider that losing all your fortune is much less painful than losing only half of it.
To bankrupt a fool, give him information.
In science you need to understand the world; in business you need others to misunderstand it.
I suspect that they put Socrates to death because there is something terribly unattractive, alienating, and nonhuman in thinking with too much clarity.
Education makes the wise slightly wiser, but it makes the fool vastly more dangerous.
Your brain is most intelligent when you don’t instruct it on what to do—something people who take showers discover on occasion.
If your anger decreases with time, you did injustice; if it increases, you suffered injustice.
Work destroys your soul by stealthily invading your brain during the hours not officially spent working; be selective about professions.
In nature we never repeat the same motion; in captivity (office, gym, commute, sports), life is just repetitive-stress injury. No randomness.
Don’t talk about “progress” in terms of longevity, safety, or comfort before comparing zoo animals to those in the wilderness.
If you know, in the morning, what your day looks like with any precision, you are a little bit dead—the more precision, the more dead you are.
There is no intermediate state between ice and water but there is one between life and death: employment.
You have a calibrated life when most of what you fear has the titillating prospect of adventure.
Procrastination is the soul rebelling against entrapment.
When we want to do something while unconsciously certain to fail, we seek advice so we can blame someone else for the failure.
You never win an argument until they attack your person.
The modern hypocrite gives the designation “respect” to what is nothing but fear of the powerful. –
The first one who uses “but” has lost the argument.
The characteristic feature of the loser is to bemoan, in general terms, mankind’s flaws, biases, contradictions, and irrationality—without exploiting them for fun and profit.
Usually, what we call a “good listener” is someone with skillfully polished indifference.
is the appearance of inconsistency, and not its absence, that makes people attractive.
If powerful assholes don’t find you “arrogant,” it means you are doing something wrong.
It is a very powerful manipulation to let others win the small battles.
If you want strangers to help you, smile. For those close to you, cry.
Life is about execution rather than purpose.
If you get easily bored, it means that your BS detector is functioning properly; if you forget (some) things, it means that your mind knows how to filter; and if you feel sadness, it means that you are human.
We need to feel a little bit lost somewhere, physically or intellectually, at least once a day.
The ultimate freedom lies in not having to explain why you did something.
Asking science to explain life and vital matters is equivalent to asking a grammarian to explain poetry.
is not possible to have fun when you try.
You exist if and only if you are free to do things without a visible objective, with no justification and, above all, outside the dictatorship of someone else’s narrative.
For life to be really fun, what you fear should line up with what you desire.
Religion isn’t so much about telling man that there is one God as about preventing man from thinking that he is God.
Atheists are just modern versions of religious fundamentalists: both take religion too literally. –
Success is becoming in middle adulthood what you dreamed to be in late childhood. The rest comes from loss of control.
The opposite of success isn’t failure; it is name-dropping.
You don’t become completely free by just avoiding to be a slave; you also need to avoid becoming a master.*
Quite revealing of human preferences that more suicides come from shame or loss of financial and social status than medical diagnoses.
You will never know for sure if someone is an asshole until he becomes rich.
What fools call “wasting time” is most often the best investment.
There is no clearer sign of failure than a middle-aged man boasting of his performance in college.
Karl Marx, a visionary, figured out that you can control a slave much better by convincing him he is an employee.
You will be civilized on the day you can spend a long period doing nothing, learning nothing, and improving nothing, without feeling the slightest amount of guilt.
Someone who says “I am busy” is either declaring incompetence (and lack of control of his life) or trying to get rid of you.
