Wit seduces by signaling intelligence without nerdiness.
A prophet is not someone with special visions, just someone blind to most of what others see
You cannot do anything with knowledge unless you know where it stops, and the costs of using it.
Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking.
The curious mind embraces science; the gifted and sensitive, the arts; the practical, business; the leftover becomes an economist
Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market alow you to put there.
A prophet is not someone who first had an idea. He is the one to first believe in it and take it to its conclusion.
There is a saying that bad traders divorce their spouse sooner than abandon their positions. Loyalty to ideas is not a good thing for traders, scientists – or anyone.
Meditation is a way to be narcissistic without hurting anyone
Just as no monkey is as good-looking as the ugliest of humans, no academic is worthier than the worst of the creators
If the past, by bringing surprises, did not resemble the past previous to it (what I call the past’s past), then why should our future resemble our current past?
In the past, only some of the males, but all of the females, were able to procreate. Equality is more natural for females.
The next time someone pesters you with unneeded advice, gently remind him of the fate of the monk whom Ivan the Terrible put to death for delivering uninvited (and moralizing) advice. It works as a short-term cure.
The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds
When you beat up someone physically, you get excercise and stress relief; when you assault him verbally on the Internet, you just harm yourself.
It took us a while to discover that we do effectively think, but that we more readily narrate backward in order to give ourselves the illusion of understanding, and give a cover to our past actions.
A theory is like medicine (or government): often useless, sometimes necessary, always self-serving, and on occasion lethal. So it needs to be used with care, moderation and close adult supervision.
My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal
In poor countries, officials receive explicit bribes; in D.C. they get the sophisticated, implicit, unspoken promise to work for large corporations
The rationalist imagines an imbecile-free society; the empiricist and imbecile-proof one, or even better, a rationalist-proof one.
Why do we keep focusing on the minutiae, not the possible significant large events, in spite of the obvious evidence of their huge influence?
English does not distinguish between arrogant-up (irreverence toward the temporarily powerful) and arrogant-down (directed at the small guy).
Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur
They will envy you for your success, your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status – but rarely for your wisdom.
Every social association that is not face-to-face is injurious to your health
Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.
A mistake is not something to be determined after the fact, but in the light of the information until that point
What organized dating sites fail to understand is that the people are far more interesting in what they don’t say about themselves.
The problem is that our ideas are sticky: once we produce a theory, we are not likely to change our minds….
The author cites researcher David Howard’s idea of post-traumatic growth. Howard contends that some individuals faced with a traumatic event actually develop new strength.
Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love; close enough on the surface but, to the nonsucker, not exactly the same thing
If you hear a “prominent” economist using the word ‘equilibrium,’ or ‘normal distribution,’ do not argue with him; just ignore him, or try to put a rat down his shirt.
Suckers think that you cure greed with money, addiction with substances, expert problems with experts, banking with bankers, economics with economists, and debt crises with debt spending
The best way to measure the loss of intellectual sophistication – this “nerdification,” to put it bluntly – is in the growing disappearance of sarcasm, as mechanic minds take insults a bit too literally.
A central argument is never a summary. It is more like a generator.
The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.
Only he who is free with his time is free with his opinion.
The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free
Know how to rank your beliefs not according to their plausibility but by the harm they may cause.
Most info-Web-media-newspaper types have a hard time swallowing the idea that knowledge is reached (mostly) by removing junk from peoples heads
Doctors most commonly get mixed up between absence of evidence and evidence of abense
Probability and expectation are not the same. Its probability and probability times the pay off.
What America does best is produce the ability to accept failure.
Globalization has created this interlocking fragility. At no time in the history of the universe has the cancellation of a Christmas order in New York meant layoffs in China.
Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg didn’t finish college. Too much emphasis is placed on formal education – I told my children not to worry about their grades but to enjoy learning.
I drive a hybrid, moving into an electric car. I only drink tap water, never consume food that’s travelled.
I’m in favour of religion as a tamer of arrogance. For a Greek Orthodox, the idea of God as creator outside the human is not God in God’s terms. My God isn’t the God of George Bush.
I select a very small number of things to be sceptical about, such as markets, and on these I am hypersceptic. But I want to be fooled by randomness in art. I want the ceremonial of religion; we are made for it.
The people I go after are the false experts, those who do not accept the limits of their knowledge.
The next time you experience a blackout, take some solace by looking at the sky. You will not recognize it.
We humans lack imagination, to the point of not even knowing what tomorrow’s important things will look like.
All of technology, really, is about maximizing free options.
We should ban banks from risk-taking because society is going to pay the price.
We know from chaos theory that even if you had a perfect model of the world, you’d need infinite precision in order to predict future events. With sociopolitical or economic phenomena, we don’t have anything like that.