“The person you are most afraid to contradict is yourself.”

“Procrastination is the soul rebelling against entrapment.”

“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).”

“Wit seduces by signaling intelligence without showing it.”

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

“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.”

“The idea is not to worry about whether the glass is half-empty or half-full — it’s to understand who is paying for the drink.”

“Half the people lie with their lips; the other half with their tears.”

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

“The opposite of success is not failure; it is name-dropping.”

“We are most motivated to learn when we don’t know enough to know how little we know.”

“It’s those who don’t know themselves who need reputation most.”

“People focus on role models; it is more effective to find antimodels — people you don’t want to resemble when you grow up.”

“Most feed their vanity by talking; some feed it by listening.”

“What fools call wasting time is most often the best investment.”

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

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

“Robustness is when you care more about the few who like your work than the multitude who dislike it.”

“My only measure of success is how much time I have for myself.”

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

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

“The difference between love and happiness is that those who talk about love tend to be in love, but those who talk about happiness tend to be not happy.”

“Most people fear being without others. I fear being without myself.”

“Hatred is much harder to fake than love.”

“The wise man listens to meaning; the fool only gets the lesson.”

“The best revenge on a liar is to convince him that you believe what he said.”

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

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

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

“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.”

“The problem with experts is that they do not know what they do not know.”

“The ancients understood the difference between a mistake and a crime; modernity does not.”

“An economist is a mixture of a charlatan and an imbecile who, by some rare accident, has gotten hold of a blackboard.”

“Bureaucracy is a construction designed to maximize the distance between a decision-maker and the risks of the decision.”

“The best way to spot a charlatan: someone who tells you what to think rather than how to think.”

“Never argue with a fool; onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.”

“The difference between a charlatan and a thinker: the charlatan converges to certainty; the thinker diverges to uncertainty.”

“Randomness is indistinguishable from complicated, undetected, and undetectable order.”

“People confuse absence of evidence with evidence of absence.”

“The most painful moments are not those we spend with uninteresting people; rather, they are those spent with uninteresting people trying hard to be interesting.”

“Hard work will get you a professorship or corporate job, but not a Nobel Prize or a Soros-level fortune. Luck has a much larger role in successful than in failed outcomes.”

“Envy does not originate with the impoverished beggar; it comes from the next-door neighbor.”

“People reserve special contempt for those who, after getting a windfall, act as if they always deserved it.”

“We are not made to understand the point, but to get things done.”

“We are satisfied with old objects like vintage wine, but we prefer new people to old ones.”

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

“The four most influential moderns: Darwin, Marx, Freud, and (indirectly) Einstein. Only Darwin has stood the test of time.”

“There are those who write to remember and those who write to forget.”

“Literature is the art of saying something twice: once in the story, once in the narration.”

“I don’t write to be read. I write to think.”

“A verbal threat is the most authentic certificate of impotence.”

“Mediocre men tend to be outraged by small insults but passive, accepting, and forgiving of large ones.”

“To have a great day: first, avoid the news; second, drink coffee with someone who makes you laugh; third, spend some time doing nothing.”

“Religion is not designed to answer questions but to dissolve them.”

“The sucker’s trap is being devoted to what is not devoted to you.”

“You can commit an injustice by omission; you can be generous by abstention.”

“The sacred is what you are willing to take a financial loss for.”

“If you want people to read a book, tell them it is overrated.”

“What I learned on my own I still remember.”

“There is no more unmistakable sign of a loser than the loss of interest in something when it becomes compulsory.”

“I am not an author; I am a thinker who writes.”

“I write to discover, not to explain.”

“Never say ‘I don’t know’ in isolation; follow it immediately with ‘but I suspect…’”

“You need to read less, and think more about what you read.”

“The only rule I know: be either first or last.”

“A good maxim allows you to have the last word without even starting the conversation.”

“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.”

“Ethics is what you do when nobody is looking.”

“Ethical is someone who is harmed by his own mistake.”

“Don’t tell me what you think — show me your portfolio.”

“For a free person, the worst that can happen is to be mistaken for a consultant.”

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

“You can afford to be compassionate, lax, and nonrigorous in all areas of life, except one: the truth.”

“People who don’t take risks generally make two types of errors: errors of omission and errors of commission. The ones who take risks make one type: errors of commission.”

“Most of what we call wisdom consists of being an expert at learning from hindsight.”

“The rich are the last to find out that their money buys them nothing — they find out too late.”

“Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.”

“The best filter for finding a good professional: those who are busy; the incompetent ones always have time.”

“If something looks irrational — and has been so for a long time — odds are you have a wrong definition of rationality.”

“The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware they are not free.”

“Most people are in awe of complexity; they should be in awe of simplicity.”

“To be a philosopher, start by walking very slowly.”

“The smaller the town, the more you are known; the more you are known, the more you behave.”

“Society works better with clearly defined heroes and clearly defined villains.”

“The difference between a professional and an amateur: the professional knows what he doesn’t know.”

“To understand the modern university, compare the medieval monk to the modern professor: the monk improved with age, the professor did not.”