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.

Amateur Hour in America

I’m waiting patiently to see this generation’s Edward R. Murrow in media and the press.

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I have already seen this Administration’s  Joe McCarthys.

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However there are a few “profiles in courage”…For example,  Hagan Scotten told Justice Department officials that he would not be party to a political prosecution (below)….

But any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way. If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.

Hagan Scotten, Assistant United States Attorney, Southern District of New York

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When Trump offered the severance package to federal employees, I did not realize that just about all of Congress decided to cash in and abandon their responsibilities too.

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When Associated Press was denied access to the White House press room I was disappointed other media members did not walk out to show their support. 

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Just a thought, but a long moratorium on reporting news about this Administration and members would be mentally healthy for this country.

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Appropriate Aphorisms for Our Times

“A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.” 

— Bertrand de Jouvenel

“Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian.”

— Robert Orben

“A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”

— George Bernard Shaw