Simplicity over complexity, history over fiction — the old regard these as aesthetic judgments; in fact they are mnemonic aids.
Jul 152015
Jul 142015
Stupidity at an immense age becomes instrumental rationality, just as crime on an immense scale becomes statecraft.
Jul 132015
The to-read list is a stack, not a queue.
Jul 102015
Humor used to be funny.
Jul 092015
The tragedy of human intercourse is that people’s two grand passions — their own health and their own children — interest no one else.
Jul 082015
Halving your actual possessions doubles your effective ones.
Jul 072015
There are perfect works of art, and great works of art, but no great work of art is perfect.
Jul 062015
The best one can ever say for a policy is that it has not been obviously ruinous.
Jul 032015
The unhappy man has the recompense of not being told that his unhappiness is a delusion.
Jul 022015
Three qualities distinguish phony erudition: it’s all recent, it’s all humanities, and it’s all in one language.