Bed Of Procrustes Quotes

Love without sacrifice is like theft

Half of the people lie with their lips; the other half with their tears

What I learned on my own I still remember

If you want to annoy a poet, explain his poetry.

They will envy you for your success, your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status - but rarely for your wisdom.

Wit seduces by signaling intelligence without nerdiness.

A prophet is not someone with special visions, just someone blind to most of what others see

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.

Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love; close enough on the surface but, to the nonsucker, not exactly the same thing

The curious mind embraces science; the gifted and sensitive, the arts; the practical, business; the leftover becomes an economist

Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur

Meditation is a way to be narcissistic without hurting anyone

Karl Marx, a visionary, figured out that you can control a slave much better by convincing him he is an employee.

My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal

When you beat up someone physically, you get excercise and stress relief; when you assault him verbally on the Internet, you just harm yourself.

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

To bankrupt a fool, give him information.

What organized dating sites fail to understand is that the people are far more interesting in what they don't say about themselves.

The imagination of the genius vastly surpasses his intellect; the intellect of the academic vastly surpasses his imagination

The classical man's worst fear was inglorious death; the modern man's worst fear is just death

Work destroys your soul by stealthily invading your brain during the hours not officially spent working; be selective about professions.

true humility is when you can surprise yourself more than others; the rest is either shyness or good marketing

Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.

You know you have influence when people start noticing your absence more than the presence of others.

In poor countries, officials receive explicit bribes; in D.C. they get the sophisticated, implicit, unspoken promise to work for large corporations

By all means, avoid words—threats, complaints, justification, narratives, reframing, attempts to win arguments, supplications; avoid words!

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

They agree that chess training only improves chess skills but disagree that classroom training (almost) only improves classroom skills.

I suspect the I.Q., SAT, and school grades are tests designed by nerds so they can get high scores in order to call each other intelligent...Smart and wise people who score low on IQ tests, or patently intellectually defective ones, like the former U.S. president George W. Bush, who score high on them (130), are testing the test and not the reverse.

You can tell how uninteresting a person is by asking him whom he finds interesting.

Just as no monkey is as good-looking as the ugliest of humans, no academic is worthier than the worst of the creators

Men destroy each other during war, themselves during peacetime.

In science you need to understand the world; in business you need others to misunderstand it.

Education makes the wise slightly wiser, but it makes the fool vastly more dangerous.

To understand how something works, figure out how to break it.

Your reputation is harmed the most by what you say to defend it.

English does not distinguish between arrogant-up (irreverence toward the temporarily powerful) and arrogant-down (directed at the small guy).

The rationalist imagines an imbecile-free society; the empiricist and imbecile-proof one, or even better, a rationalist-proof one.

An idea stats to be interesting when you get scared of taking it to its logical conclusion.

Contra the prevailing belief, "success" isn't being on top of a hierarchy, it is standing outside all hierarchies.

You are rich if money you refuse tastes better than money you accept.

Regular minds find similarities in stories (and situations); finer minds detect differences.

Sometimes people ask you a question with their eyes begging you to not tell them the truth.

The person you are the most afraid to contradict is yourself.

A verbal threat is the most authentic certificate of impotence.

The opposite of manliness isn’t cowardice; it’s technology.

For I have a single definition of success: you look in the mirror every evening, and wonder if you disappoint the person you were at 18, right before the age when people start getting corrupted by life. Let him or her be the only judge; not your reputation, not your wealth, not your standing in the community, not the decorations on your lapel. If you do not feel ashamed, you are successful. All other definitions of success are modern constructions; fragile modern constructions.

In the past, only some of the males, but all of the females, were able to procreate. Equality is more natural for females.

The difference between slaves in Roman and Ottoman days and today’s employees is that slaves did not need to flatter their boss.

Wisdom in the young is as unattractive as frivolity in the elderly.

The traits I respect are erudition and the courage to stand up when half-men are afraid for their reputation. Any idiot can be intelligent.

There is no intermediate state between ice and water but there is one between life and death: employment.

Some people are only funny when they try to be serious.

A mathematician starts with a problem and creates a solution; a consultant starts by offering a “solution” and creates a problem.

It is a very recent disease to mistake the unobserved for the nonexistent; but some are plagued with the worse disease of mistaking the unobserved for the unobservable.

They think that intelligence is about noticing things that are relevant (detecting patterns); in a complex world, intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant (avoiding false patterns).

Academics are only useful when they try to be useless (say, as in mathematics and philosophy) and dangerous when they try to be useful.

It seems that it is the most unsuccessful people who give the most advice, particularly for writing and financial matters.

Asking science to explain life and vital matters is equivalent to asking a grammarian to explain poetry.

...my classical values make me advocate the triplet of erudition, elegance, and courage; against modernity's phoniness, nerdiness, and philistinism...many philistines reduce my ideas to an opposition of technology when in fact I am opposing the naive blindness to it's side affects - the fragility criterion. I'd rather be unconditional about ethical and conditional about technology than the the reverse.

What I learned on my own I still remember.

I suspect that they put Socrates to death because there is something terribly unattractive, alienating, and nonhuman in thinking with too much clarity.

The weak shows his strength and hides his weaknesses; the magnificent exhibits his weaknesses like ornaments.

If the professor is not capable of giving a class without preparation, don’t attend. People should only teach what they have learned organically, through experience and curiosity…or get another job.

The left holds that because markets are stupid models should be smart; the right believes that because models are stupid markets should be smart. Alas, it never hit both sides that both markets and models are very stupid.

A good book gets better on the second reading. A great book on the third. Any book not worth rereading isn’t worth reading.

Don’t complain too loud about wrongs done you; you may give ideas to your less imaginative enemies.

Religion isn’t so much about telling man that there is one God as about preventing man from thinking that he is God.

You don't become completely free just by avoiding to be a slave; you also need to avoid becoming a master.

Since the Enlightenment, in the great tension between rationalism (how we would like things to be so they make sense to us) and empiricism (how things are), we have been blaming the world for not fitting the beds of “rational” models, have tried to change humans to fit technology, fudged our ethics to fit our needs for employment, asked economic life to fit the theories of economists, and asked human life to squeeze into some narrative.

Pure generosity is when you help the ingrate. Every other form is self-serving.

Modernity’s double punishment is to make us both age prematurely and live longer.

Most people fear being without audiovisual stimulation because they are too repetitive when they think and imagine things on their own.

The fact that people in countries with cold weather tend to be harder working, richer, less relaxed, less amicable, less tolerant of idleness, more (over) organized and more harried than those in hotter climates should make us wonder whether wealth is mere indemnification, and motivation is just overcompensation for not having a real life.

Nation-states like war; city-states like commerce; families like stability; and individuals like entertainment,

People often need to suspend their self-promotion, and have someone in their lives they do not need to impress. This explains dog ownership.

There are designations, like “economist,” “prostitute,” or “consultant,” for which additional characterization doesn’t add information.

Don’t talk about “progress” in terms of longevity, safety, or comfort before comparing zoo animals to those in the wilderness.

To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers.

Social science means inventing a certain brand of human we can understand.

What made medicine fool people for so long was that its successes were prominently displayed and its mistakes (literally) buried.

If it costs you your peace, it's too expensive.

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.

What they call philosophy I call literature; what they call literature I call journalism; what they call journalism I call gossip; and what they call gossip I call (generously) voyeurism.

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).

People feel deep anxiety finding out that someone they thought was stupid is actually more intelligent than they are.

Hard science gives sensational results with a horribly boring process; philosophy gives boring results with a sensational process; literature gives sensational results with a sensational process; and economics gives boring results with a boring process.

If you need to listen to music while walking, don’t walk; and please don’t listen to music.

They will envy you for your success, for your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status—but rarely for your wisdom.

An idea starts to be interesting when you get scared of taking it to its logical conclusion.

The fastest way to become rich is to socialize with the poor; the fastest way to become poor is to socialize with the rich.

you have a real life if and only if you do not compete with anyone in any of your pursuits

You never win an argument until they attack your person.

You are rich if and only if money you refuse tastes better than money you accept.

Most so-called writers keep writing and writing with the hope to, some day, find something to say.

The only valid political system is one that can handle an imbecile in power without suffering from it.

True humility is when you can surprise yourself more than others; the rest is either shyness or good marketing.

The Nation-state: apartheid without political incorrectness.

Technology can degrade (and endanger) every aspect of a sucker’s life while convincing him that it is becoming more “efficient.” - The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free. - You have a real life if and only if you do not compete with anyone in any of your pursuits. - With terminal disease, nature lets you die with abbreviated suffering; medicine lets you suffer with prolonged dying. -

The Procrustean bed. . .suggests itself with dispiriting aptness as a metaphor for the Culture Wars, right down to the blandishments with which Procrustes must have lured his guests over the threshold. (I picture him as a handsome fellow with a large vocabulary and an oleaginous tongue, not unlike the chairmen of many English departments.) There's just one crucial difference. Sometimes Procrustes lopped off his victims, and sometimes he stretched them, but the Culture Wars always lop. I have never seen cultural politics enlarge a work of literature, only diminish it.