An erudite is someone who displays less than he knows; a journalist or consultant, the opposite.
An ad hominem attack against an intellectual, not against an idea, is highly flattering. It indicates that the person does not have anything intelligent to say about your message.
Amateurs in any discipline are the best, if you can connect with them. Unlike dilettantes, career professionals are to knowledge what prostitutes are to love.
Am spus că se pare că avem o înclinație naturală spre platonificare și spre a gândi în termenii materialelor studiate: nimeni, fie el zidar sau filosof al naturii, nu poate scăpa prea ușor de aservire...
Alexander the Magnus was once called to solve the following challenge in the Phrygian city of Gordium (as usual with Greek stories, in modern-day Turkey). When he entered Gordium, he found an old wago...
Alas, we are not manufactured, in our current edition of the human race, to understand abstract matters—we need context. Randomness and uncertainty are abstractions. We respect what has happened, igno...
Ainoa asia, jota onnetar ei säätele, on käyttäytymiseni.
Administrators everywhere on the planet, in all businesses and pursuits, and at all times in history, have been the plague.
Adam Smith himself made the analogy of the economy as a watch or a clock that once set in motion continues on its own.
Accidentul pozitiv (ca în cazul medicamentului pentru hipertensiune care a produs beneficii colaterale ce au condus apoi la Viagra) a reprezentat metoda centrală a empiriștilor în descoperirea medical...
Academics are only useful when they try to be useless (say, as in mathematics and philosophy) and dangerous when they try to be useful.
Above all, an erudite can be dissatisfied with his own knowledge, and such dissatisfaction is a wonderful shield against Platonicity, the simplifications of the five-minute manager, or the philistinis...
A squeeze occurs when people have no choice but to do something, and do it right away, regardless of the costs.
A mathematician starts with a problem and creates a solution; a consultant starts by offering a solution and creates a problem.
A man is honorable in proportion to the personal risks he takes for his opinion—in other words, the amount of downside he is exposed to.
A man is honorable in proportion to the personal risks he takes for his opinion—in other words, the amount of downside he is exposed to. To sum him up, Nero believed in erudition, aesthetics, and risk...
A half-man (or, rather, half-person) is not someone who does not have an opinion, just someone who does not take risks for it.
A complex system, contrary to what people believe, does not require complicated systems and regulations and intricate policies.
A cluster of municipalities with charming provincial enmities, their own internal fights, and people out to get one another aggregates to a quite benign and stable state.
The error in reasoning is a bit from wishful thinking, because education is considered good; I wonder why people don’t make the epiphenomenal association between the wealth of a country and something...