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The Bed of Procrustes

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Country
  
United States

Series
  
Incerto

Media type
  
Print (Paperback)

Originally published
  
30 November 2010

Preceded by
  
Antifragile

Publisher
  
Random House (U.S.)

3.7/5
Goodreads

Language
  
English

Publication date
  
November 30, 2010

Pages
  
157 pp (paperback)

Author
  
Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Genre
  
Non-fiction

Subjects
  
Aphorism, Philosophy

The Bed of Procrustes t3gstaticcomimagesqtbnANd9GcRPMwzzDFJJONtR1k

Similar
  
Nassim Nicholas Taleb books, Quotation books

The bed of procrustes by nassim nicholas taleb animated


The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms is a philosophy book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb written in the aphoristic style. It was first released on November 30, 2010 by Random House. An updated edition was released on October 26, 2016 that includes fifty percent more material than the 2010 release. According to Taleb, the book "contrasts the classical values of courage, elegance, and erudition against the modern diseases of nerdiness, philistinism, and phoniness." The title refers to a sadistic thug from Greek mythology who abducted travelers and forced them to lie in a special bed.

Contents

The book is part of Taleb's four volume philosophical essay on uncertainty, titled the Incerto and covers the following books: Antifragile (2012), The Black Swan (2007–2010), Fooled by Randomness (2001) and The Bed of Procrustes (2010–2016).

The bed of procrustes by nassim nicholas taleb


Selected aphorisms

  • What fools call “wasting time” is most often the best investment.
  • A man without a heroic bent starts dying at the age of thirty.
  • The difference between slaves in Roman and Ottoman days and today’s employees is that slaves did not need to flatter their boss.
  • You are rich if and only if money you refuse tastes better than money you accept.
  • Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur.
  • You can tell how uninteresting a person is by asking him whom he finds interesting.
  • Procrastination is the soul rebelling against entrapment.
  • Preoccupation with efficacy is the main obstacle to a poetic, elegant, robust and heroic life.
  • Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.
  • They are born, put in a box; they go home to live in a box; they study by ticking boxes; they go to what is called “work” in a box, where they sit in their cubicle box; they drive to the grocery store in a box to buy food in a box; they talk about thinking “outside the box”; and when they die they are put in a box.

    • References

    The Bed of Procrustes Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA


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