Biography is open to any writer who possesses industry without talent. If he also lacks industry, there is memoir.
Dec 282021
Dec 272021
There is a limit to the number of people who can be sanely ruled under a single polity, a Dunbar’s Number for governance. It is probably greater than 150 and certainly less than 300 million.
Dec 242021
Some jobs you keep only if you solve the problem you are charged with, others only if you don’t.
Dec 232021
Opinions are like sausages: if you know how they’re made they get harder to swallow.
Dec 222021
More of a bad thing is always worse, and often so is more of a good thing.
Dec 212021
A large reputation, like an impetus in a vacuum, can, in the absence of a countervailing force, be coasted on forever.
Dec 202021
The ambitious man believes, with perfect sincerity, in whatever furthers his ambition.
Dec 172021
We complain to the gods that they don’t exist.
Dec 162021
Privacy was ephemeral, almost accidental, springing up here and there in that fleeting century between poverty and universal surveillance.
Dec 152021
The shorter you write, the less you lie.