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December 9 - December 11, 2018
Erudition without bullshit, intellect without cowardice, courage without imprudence, mathematics without nerdiness, scholarship without academia, intelligence without shrewdness, religiosity without intolerance, elegance without softness, sociality without dependence, enjoyment without addiction, religion without tolerance, and, above all, nothing without skin in the game.
It is harder to say no when you really mean it than when you don’t.
Never say no twice if you mean it.
Your reputation is harmed the most by what you say to defend it.
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.
If someone is making an effort to ignore you, he is not ignoring you.
The opposite of manliness isn’t cowardice; it’s technology.
It is the appearance of inconsistency, and not its absence, that makes people attractive.
By praising someone for his lack of defects you are also implying his lack of virtues.
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 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.
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.
You can replace lies with truth; but myth is only displaced with a narrative.
The source of the tragic in history is in mistaking someone else’s unconditional for conditional—and the reverse.
Restaurants get you in with food to sell you liquor; religions get you in with belief to sell you rules (e.g., avoid debt). People can understand the notion of God, not unexplained rules, interdicts, and categorical heuristics.
“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.
Decline starts with the replacement of dreams with memories and ends with the replacement of memories with other memories.
drink nothing from the past four thousand years (just wine and water); but talk to no ordinary man over forty. A man without a heroic bent starts dying at the age of thirty.
The fastest way to become rich is to socialize with the poor; the fastest way to become poor is to socialize with the rich.
Fitness is certainly the sign of strength, but outside of natural stimuli the drive to acquire fitness can signal some deep incurable weakness.
In most debates, people seem to be trying to convince one another; but all they can hope for is new arguments to convince themselves.
Over the long term, you are more likely to fool yourself than others.
It is those who use others who are the most upset when someone uses them.
My only measure of success is how much time you have to kill.
You have a real life if and only if you do not compete with anyone in any of your pursuits.
Only in recent history has “working hard” signaled pride rather than shame for lack of talent, finesse, and, mostly, sprezzatura.
We are hunters; we are only truly alive in those moments when we improvise; no schedule, just small surprises and stimuli from the environment.
One of the shortest books I’ve ever read had 745 pages. The longest book I’ve ever read was 205 pages.
Skills that transfer: street fights, off-path hiking, seduction, broad erudition. Skills that don’t: school, games, sports, laboratory—what’s reduced and organized.
Real life (vita beata) is when your choices correspond to your duties.
When I look at people on treadmills I wonder how alpha lions, the strongest, expend the least amount of energy, sleeping twenty hours a day; others hunt for them. Caesar pontem fecit.*
Just as there are authors who enjoy having written and others who enjoy writing, there are books you enjoy reading and others you enjoy having read.
Most so-called writers keep writing and writing with the hope to, some day, find something to say.
It is much less dangerous to think like a man of action than to act like a man of thought.
In any subject, if you don’t feel that you don’t know enough, you don’t know enough.
We unwittingly amplify commonalities with friends, dissimilarities with strangers, and contrasts with enemies.
The fool generalizes the particular; the nerd particularizes the general; some do both; and the wise does neither.
True love is the complete victory of the particular over the general, and the unconditional over the conditional.
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.
Mental clarity is the child of courage, not the other way around.*3
Wit seduces by signaling intelligence without nerdiness.
Studying neurobiology to understand humans is like studying ink to understand literature.
You can only convince people who think they can benefit from being convinced.
Trust those who trust you and distrust those who are suspicious of others.
