The Bed of Procrustes
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The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms is a philosophy book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb written in the aphoristic style. It was first released on November 30, 2010 by Random House. An updated edition was released on October 26, 2016 that includes fifty percent more material than the 2010 edition. According to Taleb, the book "contrasts the classical values of courage, elegance, and erudition against the modern diseases of nerdiness, philistinism, and phoniness." The title refers to Procrustes, a figure from Greek mythology who abducted travelers and stretched or chopped their bodies to fit the length of his bed.
The book is part of Taleb's five volume philosophical essay on uncertainty, titled the Incerto and covers Antifragile (2012), The Black Swan (2007–2010), Fooled by Randomness (2001),The Bed of Procrustes (2010–2016), and Skin in the Game (2018).
Selected aphorisms
- 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.
