The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (Incerto Book 4)

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Friendship that ends was never one; there was at least one sucker in it.

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 Seneca, the Stoic sage should withdraw from public efforts when unheeded and the state is corrupt beyond repair. It is wiser to wait for self-destruction.

Regular men are a certain varying number of meals away from lying, stealing, killing, or even working as forecasters for the Federal Reserve in Washington; never the magnificent.*