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The fool views himself as more unique and others more generic; the wise views himself as more generic and others more unique. –
The sucker’s trap is when you focus on what you know and what others don’t know, rather than the reverse.
Medieval man was a cog in a wheel he did not understand; modern man is a cog in a complicated system he thinks he understands.
Finer men tolerate others’ small inconsistencies though not the large ones; the weak tolerate others’ large inconsistencies though not small ones.
Your silence is only informational if you can speak skillfully. –
Wit seduces by signaling intelligence without nerdiness.
Studying neurobiology to understand humans is like studying ink to understand literature.
If you find any reason why you and someone are friends, you are not friends.
Soldiers are more loyal to their comrades (and willing to die for them) than to their country.
My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal.*
People reveal much more about themselves while lying than when they tell the truth.
If we are the only animal with a sense of justice, it would clearly be because we also are about the only animal with a sense of cruelty.
It is a great compliment for an honest person to be mistaken for a crook by a crook. –
Supposedly, if you are uncompromising or intolerant with BS you lose friends. But you will also make friends, better friends.
Meditation is a way to be narcissistic without hurting anyone.
Every angel is an asshole somewhere.
True humility is when you can surprise yourself more than others; the rest is either shyness or good marketing.
Another marker for charlatans: they don’t voice opinions that can get them in trouble. –
Greatness starts with the replacement of hatred with polite disdain.
there must be a moral dimension to insults.
Trust people who make a living lying down or standing up more than those who do so sitting down.
Your duty is to scream those truths that one should shout but that are merely whispered. –
Don’t trust a man who needs an income—except if it is minimum wage.*
Any action one takes with the aim of winning an award, any award, corrupts to the core.
A prostitute who sells her body (temporarily) is vastly more honorable than someone who sells his opinion for promotion
I trust everyone except those who tell me they are trustworthy.
Trust those who are greedy for money a thousand times more than those who are greedy for credentials. –
Pure generosity is when you help the ingrate. Every other form is self-serving.*
Trust those who trust you and distrust those who are suspicious of others.
The difference between magnificence and arrogance is in what one does when nobody is looking.
The nation-state: apartheid without political incorrectness.
In a crowd of a hundred, 50 percent of the wealth, 90 percent of the imagination, and 100 percent of the intellectual courage will reside in a single person—not necessarily the same one.
Just as dyed hair makes older men less attractive, it is what you do to hide your weaknesses that makes them repugnant.
For soldiers, we use the term “mercenary,” but we absolve employees of responsibility with “everybody needs to make a living.”
Someone from your social class who becomes poor affects you more than thousands of starving ones outside of it.
It takes a lot of skills to be virtuous without being boring.
To understand how something works, figure out how to break it.
General principle: the solutions (on balance) need to be simpler than the problems.
Robustness is progress without impatience.
The problem with the idea of “learning from one’s mistakes” is that most of what people call mistakes aren’t mistakes.
Robust is when you care more about the few who like your work than the multitude who dislike it (artists); fragile when you care more about the few who dislike your work than the multitude who like it (politicians).
Failure-resistant is achievable; failure-free is not.
You can expect blowups and explosive errors in fields where there is a penalty for simplicity.
Sports are commoditized and, alas, prostituted randomness.
They agree that chess training only improves chess skills but disagree that classroom training (almost) only improves classroom skills.
People like to eat fish by the water even if the fish was caught far away and transported by trucks.
Upon arriving at the hotel in Dubai, the businessman had a porter carry his luggage; I later saw him lifting free weights in the gym.
They read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall on an eReader but refuse to drink Château Lynch-Bages in a Styrofoam cup.
In a conflict, the middle ground is least likely to be correct.
A prophet is not someone with special visions, just someone blind to most of what others see.
