Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love; close enough on the surface but, to the non-sucker, not exactly the same thing.

When you ask people, 'What's the opposite of fragile?,' they tend to say robust, resilient, adaptable, solid, strong. That's not it. The opposite of fragile is something that gains from disorder.

I don't know anyone on Wall Street who goes to work every day thinking of anything but how to increase their bonus.

Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love.

People work out, they stress their body, and their body gets stronger from stress.

The narrative fallacy addresses our limited ability to look at sequences of facts without weaving an explanation into them, or, equivalently, forcing a logical link, an arrow of relationship, upon them. Explanations bind facts together. They make them all the more easily remembered; they help them make more sense. Where this propensity can go wrong is when it increases our impression of understanding.

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