Imagine thinking that people, if they only understood you better, would like you more.

Overrated: State violence
Underrated: Personal violence

First we were killed by nature, then by rulers, and finally we resorted to killing ourselves.

Dr. Seuss names his creatures Thing 1 and Thing 2 to signify that they are not distinct in any important way; and statistics names its errors Type 1 and Type 2 to signify that they are.

Many supposed gold-diggers are digging not for gold but for the capacities that amassed it.

Thinking, like plumbing, is something we rarely do for ourselves; but no one imagines that he does his own plumbing.

In good prose lies sound unnatural.

A little learning is sometimes dangerous and always tiresome.

Just as there are ideas so mad that you must be clever to believe them, so there is behavior so weird that you must be clever to engage in it.

At fifty everyone has the prose style he deserves.

When intelligence is no longer required for survival, it is instead expended on ever more baroque ways of being wrong.

The first rule of Fight or Flight Club is that there is no time to talk about Fight or Flight Club.

Few actions scale more effectively than help. You are likely to do a little harm when you try to help one person, and almost certain to do a lot when you try to help a great many.

My father's two fundamental rules for computer programming were Optimize later and Optimize never; and this, like so much advice about programming, also goes for life.

No deed is so awful as to prevent a man from thinking well of himself even as he commits it.

You can't sell out when no one will return your calls.

The businessman wants peace, which is good for his business; and the intellectual wants war, which is good for his.

Until it has the appearance of liberty the prison is not complete.

The contents of the dustbin
of history are recycled endlessly.

Local maxima are the root of all mediocrity.