10. The Bed of Procrustes - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote some of his favourite maxims and ways to think in life into a book. This is a great hand book for nuggets of wisdom to ponder upon. Thus ponder we do on some of our favourites. Some examples include * What fools call “wasting time” is most often the best investment. * A man without a heroic bent starts dying at the age of thirty. * The difference between slaves in Roman and Ottoman days and today’s employees is that slaves did not need to flatter their boss. * You are rich if and only if money you refuse tastes better than money you accept. * Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur. * You can tell how uninteresting a person is by asking him whom he finds interesting. * Procrastination is the soul rebelling against entrapment. * Preoccupation with efficacy is the main obstacle to a poetic, elegant, robust and heroic life. * Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed. * They are born, put in a box; they go home to live in a box; they study by ticking boxes; they go to what is called “work” in a box, where they sit in their cubicle box; they drive to the grocery store in a box to buy food in a box; they talk about thinking “outside the box”; and when they die they are put in a box. * A good maxim allows you to have the last word without even starting a conversation.

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