Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Only in recent history has "working hard" signaled pride rather than shame for lack of talent, finesse, and, mostly, sprezzatura ["a certain nonchalance"].  Their idea of the sabbatical is to work six days and rest for one; my idea of the sabbatical is to work for (part of) a day and rest for six.

From his 2010 book, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms.  Taleb is fluent in English, French, and Arabic; can converse in Spanish and Italian; and can read classical texts in Greek, Latin, Aramaic, and ancient Hebrew.  The author Malcolm Gladwell is a great admirer of Taleb.

A black swan

 

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

You exist if and only if you are free to do things without a visible objective, with no justification and, above all, outside the dictatorship of someone else's narrative.

From his 2010 book, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms.  Procrustes was the mythical Greek host who made his guests fit his bed by either chopping off their feet (if they were too tall to fit the bed) or stretching them on a rack (if they were too short).  Theseus turned the tables on Procrustes by making him fit his bed by chopping off his head.  

Taleb believes we humans squeeze life and the world into reductive categories and prepackaged narratives -- we make the man fit the bed rather than making the bed fit the man.

Theseus turns the tables on Procrustes

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Work destroys your soul by stealthily invading your brain during the hours not officially spent working.

Amen to that, brother!  From his 2010 book, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms.  Taleb is a Lebanese-born philosopher, writer, and practitioner of mathematical finance.  He is best known for his 2007 book about unpredictable events, The Black Swan, which warned of the fragility of the global financial structure.  This is the first of three consecutive posts featuring his aphorisms.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb