The traits I respect are erudition and the courage to stand up when half-men are afraid for their reputation. Any idiot can be intelligent.

If you have more than one reason to do something (choose a doctor or veterinarian, hire a gardener or an employee, marry a person, go on a trip), just don’t do it. It does not mean that one reason is better than two, just that by invoking more than one reason you are trying to convince yourself to do something. Obvious decisions (robust to error) require no more than a single reason.

You get pseudo-order when you seek order; you only get a measure of order and control when you embrace randomness.

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

If I ask you to write down the last 4 digits of your social security number, and then take you out to lunch and ask you how many dentists there are in Manhattan, there's going to be a high correlation between those two numbers. What happens is that the number psychologically makes you feel confident.

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

An erudite is someone who displays less than he knows; a journalist or consultant the opposite.