The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Review and Samples)

If you enjoy wise and pithy aphorisms, I highly recommend this book. Taleb can also be found on YouTube videos in various presentations and lectures about risk, fragility, randomness, probability and other subjects.. He is a very smart man on a variety of topics. It’s a mental and intellectual adventure to keep up and understand what he is saying at times.

Here is a very small taste of his wisdom and thinking from the book…

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

If you know, in the morning, what your day looks like with any precision, you are a little bit dead – – the more precision, the more dead you are.

It is not possible to have fun when you try.

Decline starts with the replacement of dreams with memories and ends with the replacement of memories with other memories.

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

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

Avoid calling heroes those who had no other choice.

The only valid political system is one that can handle an imbecile and power without suffering from it.
The Bed of Procrustes

Those who can’t do shouldn’t teach.

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

Early Spring Muses and Aphorisms

The quiet tragedy: longing for the life you never had more than living the one you do.

Distrust all advice, including this!

A dog will learn a new trick; an old man will defend the old one.

The older you get, the less planning you need- your calendar shrinks to a Post-It on the refrigerator.

Financial advisors are like weather forecasters: they predict storms and suffer no penalty when you get soaked.

Today’s political and corporate leaders and influencers share a common skill: telling a good story—truth optional.

Modern Day Sodom and Gomorrah

I feel like I am a family member whose father has gone on a drunken murder spree and murdered innocent women and children randomly in the streets. To make it worse, other members of my family support him and make excuses for his insane actions.

“We are on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly — very shortly,” he said. “We are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.”

Donald J. Trump 4/1/26 Address to nation

Washington has become the court of Nero, a fiery emperor, submissive courtiers and a ketamine-fueled jester in charge of purging the civil service…Never in history has a President of the United States capitulated to the enemy. Never has anyone supported an aggressor against an ally. Never has anyone trampled on the American Constitution, issued so many illegal decrees, dismissed judges who could have prevented him from doing so, dismissed the military general staff in one fell swoop, weakened all checks and balances, and taken control of social media.

Claude Malhuet on the End of American Democracy, speaking in the French Senate, Tuesday, March 4, 2025.

Most of America is exhausted with all the lies, buffoonery, hypocrisy, incompetence and delusions in Washington. With all the firings (Bondi, Noem etc.) can we fire Donald Trump too? Then we must seriously question the judgment of the people who voted for and still support him.