你最害怕違拗的人乃是你自己。

當你害怕由一個念頭引出符合邏輯的結論時，這念頭就開始變得有意思了。

制藥公司更擅長發明出疾病來接受已有的藥物治療，而不是發明出藥物來治療已有的疾病。

要理解禁欲主義給予人的自由，只要想想看：失去全部財富的痛苦遠比失去一半財富要輕。

要讓傻瓜破產，給他信息。

學術跟知識的關系，就像賣淫跟愛情的關系一樣：表面上看來似乎很接近，但在旁觀者看來，其實并不是同一回事。[1]

科學需要你了解世界；商業需要你讓別人誤解世界。

我懷疑，之所以他們處死蘇格拉底，是因為太過清晰的思考是一件非常不討人喜歡、非常令人陌生、非常違背人性的事。

教育會讓聰明人變得稍微更聰明一些，但卻會讓傻瓜變得危險很多。

一個創意獨特性的最好證據，不是過去沒有跟它類似的創意，而是現在有很多跟它相左的創意。

現代社會給我們的雙重懲罰是，既讓我們衰老得更早，又讓我們活得更長。

博學多才的人知道得多，表現出來的少；記者和咨詢人士正好相反；絕大多數人都處于這兩種情況中間。

你的腦子最聰明的時候，是你不告訴它該做什么的時候——人們偶爾會在洗澡時發現這一點。

如果你的憤怒隨著時間逐漸消散，說明你對別人做了不公平的事；如果它隨著時間逐漸增加，說明別人對你做了不公平的事。

我不知道，究竟是那些主張“慷慨帶來回報”的人意識不到這話的自相矛盾之處，還是他們所謂的“慷慨”只不過是一種巧妙的投機方式。[2]

那些認為宗教是一種“信仰”的人既不了解宗教，也不了解信仰。

工作會摧毀你的靈魂，方法是在你“不工作”的時候偷偷侵入你的腦海；所以一定要慎重選擇職業。

在自然狀態下，我們永遠不會重復同樣的事情。在受到禁錮的狀態下（辦公室，健身房，上下班路上，體育運動），生活只不過是重復性的疲勞損傷而已，沒有任何隨機性可言。

把別人的缺乏常識當作借口，這本身就是缺乏常識的表現。

用狹隘的（亞里斯多德式的）邏輯約束自己，跟避免致命的邏輯矛盾，這兩者并不是同一回事。

經濟學弄不清楚的是，群體（或者說集體）行為遠比個體行為難以預料。

不要用長壽、安全和舒適水平的提高來衡量社會的進步；動物園里的動物相比野生動物而言也是這樣的。

要是你早晨起床時，就能預測這一天會是什么樣子，那你就已經開始靠近死亡了——預測得越準確，你離死亡就越近。

冰與水之間并沒有中間狀態，但是生與死之間確實有中間狀態：雇傭狀態。

當你害怕的東西絕大多數都帶有令人心癢的冒險性時，你所過的一定是所謂的精準生活。

沒人愿意被一眼看透，無論是被別人，還是被自己。

PRELUDES

The person you are the most afraid to contradict is yourself.

An idea starts to be interesting when you get scared of taking it to its logical conclusion.

Pharmaceutical companies are better at inventing diseases that match existing drugs，rather than inventing drugs to match existing diseases.

To understand the liberating effect of asceticism，consider that losing all your fortune is much less painful than losing only half of it.

To bankrupt a fool，give him information

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

In science you need to understand the world；in business you need others to misunderstand it.

I suspect that they put Socrates to death because there is something terribly unattractive，alienating，and nonhuman in thinking with too much clarity.

Education makes the wise slightly wiser，but it makes the fool vastly more dangerous.

The test of originality for an idea is not the absence of one single predecessor，but the presence of multiple but incompatible ones.

Modernity‘s double punishment is to make us both age prematurely and live longer.

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

Your brain is most intelligent when you don’t instruct it on what to do——something people who take showers discover on occasion.

If your anger decreases with time，you did injustice；if it increases，you suffered injustice.

I wonder if those who advocate generosity for its rewards notice the inconsistency，or if what they call generosity is an attractive investment strategy.

Those who think religion is about “belief”don‘t understand religion，and don’t understand belief.

Work destroys your soul by stealthily invading your brain during the hours not officially spent working；be selective about professions.

In nature we never repeat the same motion；in captivity (office，gym，commute，sports)，life is just repetitive stress injury.No randomness.

Using，as an excuse，others‘failure of common sense is in itself a failure of common sense.

Compliance with the straitjacket of narrow (Aristotelian)logic and avoidance of fatal inconsistencies are not the same thing.

Economics cannot digest the idea that the collective (and the aggregate)are disproportionately less predictable than individuals.

Don’t talk about “progress”in terms of longevity，safety，or comfort before comparing zoo animals to those in the wilderness.

If you know，in the morning，what your day looks like with any precision，you are a little bit dead——the more precision，the more dead you are.

There is no intermediate state between ice and water but there is one between life and death：employment.

You have a calibrated life when most of what you fear has the titillating prospect of adventure.

Procrastination is the soul rebelling against entrapment.

Nobody wants to be perfectly transparent；not to others，certainly not to himself.

[1]我需要澄清的是，這方面有時也有例外，就好像妓女有時也會愛上嫖客一樣。

[2]慷慨之舉應該是不追求任何回報的，無論是在經濟上、社會上還是感情上。這樣的舉動應該是義務性的（無條件地履行責任），不是功利性的（追求集體的——甚至是個人的——收獲與回報）。“慷慨”的施予會讓施予者感到內心溫暖，甚至得到了救贖，這并沒有問題；然而，這樣的舉動不應該跟純粹發自責任感的義務性舉動相混淆。