They will envy you for your success, your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status - but rarely for your wisdom.

An elephant is vastly more efficient, metabolically, than a mouse. It's the same for a megacity as opposed to a village. But an elephant can break a leg very easily, whereas you can toss a mouse out of a window and it'll be fine. Size makes you fragile.

My nightmare scenario is that the government saves Citibank once again, as well as the other banks, and business resumes as usual. Then, the next time the system breaks, it breaks much, much bigger.

You exist if and only if you are free to do things without a visible objective, with no justification and, above all, outside the dictatorship of someone else's narrative.

Most people are sceptical about the wrong things and gullible about the wrong things.

Hard work will get you a professorship or a BMW. You need both work and luck for a Booker, a Nobel or a private jet.

Wit seduces by signaling intelligence without nerdiness.