机遇、成功、幸福与坚忍

成功就是在中年时成为你在少年时梦想成为的那个人，别的都是失控导致的结果。

成功的反义词不是失败，而是把成功人士的名字时时挂在嘴边炫耀。

现代人需要弄清楚，“富有”和“变得富有”在数学层面、个人层面、社会层面和伦理层面上不是一回事。

要获得彻底的自由，你不仅需要避免成为奴隶，还需要避免成为奴隶主。

命运惩罚贪婪者的方式是让他贫穷，惩罚特别贪婪者的方式是让他富有。

绝大多数人自杀是因为羞耻，或者是因为经济与社会地位的丧失，不是因为被确诊患了绝症。

“财富”是一个没有意义的词，因为它没法准确衡量；不如换用“缺乏财富”这个词，意思是在任一时刻，你所拥有的和你想要拥有的之间的差距。

年长的人最美丽的时候，是他们拥有了年轻人所缺乏的东西的时候：雍容，博学，智慧，经验，以及波澜不惊的平静。

我去参加一场幸福研讨会，结果发现与会者看上去都很不幸福。

傻瓜们所谓的“浪费时间”往往是最好的投资。

衰老一开始是用记忆替换梦想，到最后是用记忆替换别的记忆。

你总想避免既招人讨厌，又不招人羡慕或是妒忌。

不要读最近100年写的书，不要吃最近1 000年培植的水果，不要喝最近4 000年发明的饮料（只喝水跟红酒就够了），不要跟40岁以上的普通人说话。普通人从30岁就开始衰老死亡了。

有些职业在外人看来很有意思，其实很无聊。他们说，就连海盗都是这样。

卡尔•马克思发现，要更好地控制一个奴隶，你可以说服他相信他其实是个雇员。

在过去，天主教国家同样实行一夫一妻制，但是人们用不着考虑离婚——那时人们的寿命比今天短，婚姻的寿命比今天长。

要想一下子变得富有，可以跟穷人打交道；要想一下子变得贫穷，可以跟富人打交道。

等到你可以长时间什么都不做，什么都不学习，什么都不改进，而又完全没有负罪感时，你就算是变得文明了。

如果有人跟你说“我很忙”，那他要么是在宣称自己的无能（以及对自己生活的缺乏控制），要么是在试图摆脱你。

罗马时代的奴隶跟今天的雇员之间唯一的不同，就是奴隶用不着奉承主人。[1]

只有当拒绝收下一笔钱比收下这笔钱更让你感觉良好时，你才算是富有。

对于绝大多数人，成功就是从憎恨别人的阵营转换到被憎恨的阵营。

要弄清楚你是否真的喜欢自己的家，只要看看你回家时是否跟离家时同样开心。

爱和幸福之间的区别在于，谈论爱的人通常正处于爱河之中，谈论幸福的人通常并不幸福。

现代化就是创造出没有英雄主义的年轻人，没有智慧的老人，以及没有光彩的生活。

对于渴望别人关注的人来说，网络是个不健康的地方。

不知道有没有人测量过，在聚会上，一个稍微有点成功的、在哈佛读过书的陌生人要花多久才能让别人知道这一点。

人们总喜欢关注“榜样”，其实更应该关注的是“反榜样”——你长大后不想成为什么样的人。

你应该每次都道歉，除了在真正犯错误的时候。

对效率的追求，是阻止我们过上充满诗意的、高贵的、优雅的、富有活力的、英雄主义的生活的主要原因。

有些人，例如绝大多数银行家，是如此不适应成功，以至于他们看上去就像是穿着巨人衣服的矮子。

不要太过大声地抱怨别人对你的不公，你或许会提醒那些缺乏想象力的敌人该怎么做。

绝大多数人越是试图摆脱执念，就越会深陷其中。

要改变别人的意见，就跟改变他们的品位一样难。

我曾在被称为“丑陋”的地方度过美好时光，也曾在被称为“风景秀丽”的地方度过最无聊的时光。

健美当然是力量的表现，但除去自然刺激因素，追求健美的动力往往是内心虚弱的表现。

魅力就是侮辱别人又不让他们生气的能力。

那些不认为雇佣就是系统化的奴役的人，要么是瞎子，要么正被雇佣。

他们生下来被放在盒子里，回到家住在盒子里，学习时勾选一个个的盒子，乘着盒子去上班，工作时坐在盒子里，开着盒子去超市买装在盒子里的食物，乘着盒子去健身房，死后被放在盒子里。这些都是符合欧几里得定义的、四四方方的、表面平滑的盒子。

现代化的另一个定义：谈话越来越能通过同一时刻发生在地球上其他地方的其他谈话的片断被完整地重建出来。

20世纪宣告了社会乌托邦的破产，21世纪将会宣告科技乌托邦的破产。

建设社会、政治和医疗乌托邦的努力往往以悲剧收场，许多科技和医学发明都来源于战争。

网络让人们“彼此相连”，结果在信息和伪社会的层面上营造出了一种怪异的滥交氛围，这让人每次下线的时候都感觉自己重又变得干净了。

在绝大多数争论中，人们似乎都在试图说服对方，但他们其实最多只能说服自己。

[1]历史上，许多人都曾反复验证和揭示过这一点——最近一次的典型情况是蒙田的例子

CHANCE, SUCCESS, HAPPINESS, AND STOICISM

Success is becoming in middle adulthood what you dreamed to be in late childhood. The rest comes from loss of control.

The opposite of success isn't failure, it is namedropping.

Modernity needs to understand that being rich and becoming rich are not mathematically, personally, socially, and ethically the same thing.

You don't become completely free by just avoiding to be a slave; you also need to avoid becoming a master.

Fortune punishes the greedy by making him poor and the very greedy by making him rich.

Quite revealing of human preferences that more suicides come from shame or loss of financial and social status than medical diagnoses.

"Wealthy" is meaningless and has no robust absolute measure; use intead the subtractive measure "unwealth", that is, the difference, at any point in time, between what you have and what you would like to have.

Older people are most beautiful when they have what is lacking in the young: poise, erudition, wisdom, phronesis, and this post-heroic absence of agitation.

I went to a happiness conference; researchers looked very unhappy.

What fools call "wasting time" is most often the best investment.

Decline starts with the replacement of dreams with memories and ends with the replacement of memories with other memories.

You want to avoid being disliked without being envied or admired.

Read nothing from the past 100 years; eat no fruits from the past 1,000 years; drink nothing from the past 4,000 years (just wine and water); but talk to no ordinary man over 40. A man without a heroic bent starts dying at the age of 30.

Some pursuits are much duller from the inside. Even piracy, they say.

Karl Marx, a visionary, figured out that you can control a slave much better by convincing him he is an employee.

Catholic countries had more serial monogamy than today, but without the need for divorce——life expectancy was short; marriage duration was much, much shorter.

The fastest way to become rich is to socialize with the poor; the fastest way to become poor is to socialize with the rich.

You will be civilized on the day when you can spend a long period doing nothing, learning nothing, and improving nothing, without feeling the slightest amount of guilt.

Someone who says "I am busy" is either declaring incompetence (and lack of control of his life) or trying to get rid of you.

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.

For most, success is the harmful passage from the camp of the hating to the camp of the hated.

To see if you like where you are, without the chains of dependence, check if you are as happy returning as you were leaving.

The difference between love and happiness is that those who talk about love tend to be in love, but those who talk about happiness tend to be not happy.

Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur.

The Web is an unhealthy place for someone hungry for attention.

I wonder if anyone ever measured the time it takes, at a party, before a mildly successful stranger who went to Harvard makes others aware of it.

People focus on role models; it is more effective to find antimodels people you don't want to resemble when you grow up.

It is a good practice to always apologize, except when you have done something wrong.

Preoccupation with efficacy is the main obstacle to a poetic, noble, elegant, robust, and heroic life.

Some, like most bankers, are so unfit for success, that they look like dwarves dressed in giants' clothes.

Don't complain too loud about wrongs done you, you may give ideas to your less imaginative enemies.

Most feed their obsessions by trying to get rid of them.

It is as difficult to change someone's opinions as it is to change his tastes.

I have the fondest memories of time spent in places called ugly, themost boring ones of places called scenic.

Fitness is certainly the sign of strength, but outside of natural stimuli, the drive to acquire fitness can signal some deep incurable weakness.

Charm is the ability to insult people without offending them.

Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.

They are born then 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 go to the gym in a box to sit in a box; they talk about thinking "outside the box"; and when they die they are put in a box. All boxes, Euclidian, geometrically smooth boxes.

Another definition of modernity: conversations can be more and more completely reconstructed with clips from other conversations taking place at the same time on the planet.

The 20th century was the bankruptcy of the social utopia. The 21st will be that of the technological one.

Efforts at building social, political, and medical utopias have caused nightmares; many cures and techniques came from martial efforts.

The Web's "connectedness" creates a peculiar form of informational and pseudosocial promiscuity, which makes one feel clean after Web rationing.

In most debates, people seem to be trying to convince one another; but all they can hope for is new arguments to convince themselves.