So we ask ourselves: Why are things the way they are? What practices should be questioned and which should remain sound? This allows us to be both exotic and accessible, shocking but not gratuitous, f...
So what do we own? Just our lives—and not for long.
Some companies like Airbnb and Instragram spend a long time trying new iterations until they achieve what growth hackers call Product Market Fit (PMF);
Some things are in our control, while others are not. We control our opinion, choice, desire, aversion, and, in a word, everything of our own doing. We don’t control our body, property, reputation, po...
T he single most important practice in Stoic philosophy is differentiating between what we can change and what we can’t.
THE FOOL WHO FEEDS THE MONSTER. I knew I had to find this century-old drawing, though I wasn’t sure why. As I rode the escalator through the glass canyon of the atrium and into the bowels of the centr...
That on which you so pride yourself will be your ruin, Montaigne had inscribed on the beam of his ceiling.
The Count of Monte Cristo would put it better: What a fool I was not to tear my heart out on the day when I resolved to avenge myself! Ah, but what dangerous business this is. This artificial hardenin...
The Russians call this maskirovka—the art of deception and confusion. It is as old as strategy itself. Undermine your enemy, Sun Tzu advised 2,500 years ago. Subvert him, attack his morale, strike at...
The cucumber is bitter? Then throw it out.There are brambles in the path? Then go around.That’s all you need to know. — MARCUS AURELIUS
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. — RICHARD FEYNMAN
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. —RICHARD FEYNMAN M
The first product of self-knowledge is humility,
The historian E. P. Thompson said that history never happens as the actors suspect, that history is instead the record of unintended consequences. The assassination of Julius Caesar does not restore t...
The implications of our obstacle are theoretical—they exist in the past and the future. We live in the moment. And the more we embrace that, the easier the obstacle will be to face and move.
The little compulsions and drives we have not only chip away at our freedom and sovereignty, they cloud our clarity. We think we’re in control—but are we really?
The person is free who lives as they wish, neither compelled, nor hindered, nor limited—whose choices aren’t hampered, whose desires succeed, and who don’t fall into what repels them. Who wishes to li...
The researchers found that while sadness is an extreme emotion, it is a wholly unviral one. Sadness, like what one might feel to see a stray dog shivering for warmth or a homeless man begging for mone...
The soul is like a bowl of water, and our impressions are like the ray of light falling upon the water. When the water is troubled, it appears that the light itself is moved too, but it isn’t. So, whe...
The struggle against an obstacle inevitably propels the fighter to a new level of functioning. The extent of the struggle determines the extent of the growth. The obstacle is an advantage, not adversi...
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