When you beat up someone physically, you get excercise and stress relief; when you assault him verbally on the Internet, you just harm yourself.

A good rule of thumb is as follows: If the numbers come from somebody wearing a tie (Wall Street economist or analyst, industry public relations department, captive think tank academic and so on), you ought to be very skeptical. By design messages from these people are intended to move markets, move merchandise and/or move public policy and are not a comment on the state of the physical universe.

The government-sponsored institution Fannie Mae, when I look at its risks, seems to be sitting on a barrel of dynamite, vulnerable to the slightest hiccup. But not to worry: their large staff of scientists deemed these events "unlikely."

Comfort makes you weaker. We need some variability, some stressors. Not too much, but just enough.

Only the autodidacts are free.

He who has never sinned is less reliable than he who has only sinned once.

Life is a tightrope between two errors: generalizing the wrong particular and particularizing the wrong general.