Humorous Sayings

We've got to get beyond the ways in which the political system has been colonized by corporate wealth and by monied elite.

Does being downtrodden make us spiritual again? WEST: I don't think it's just a matter of the material conditions; it's a matter of the choices that we make.

If you want to annoy a poet, explain his poetry.

My major hobby is teasing people who take themselves and the quality of their knowledge too seriously.

Never take investment advice from someone who has to work for a living.

If you have more than one reason to do something (choose a doctor or veterinarian, hire a gardener or an employee, marry a person, go on a trip), just don't do it. Obvious decisions (robust to error) require no more than a single reason.

Some people are only funny when they try to be serious.

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.

If you lie to me, keep lying; don't hurt me by suddenly telling the truth.

A good book gets better on the second reading. A great book on the third. Any book not worth rereading isn't worth reading.

People are much less interested in what you are trying to show them than in what you are trying to hide.

A BS detection heuristic would be to use education in reverse: hire, conditional on an equal set of skills, the person with the least label-oriented education. In addition, people who didn't go to Harvard are easier to deal with in real life.

I am, at the Fed level, libertarian; at the state level, Republican; at the local level, Democrat; and at the family and friends level, a socialist. If that saying doesn't convince you of the fatuousness of left vs. right labels, nothing will.

Bureaucracy is a construction by which a person is conveniently separated from the consequences of his or her actions.

The curse of modernity is that we are increasingly populated by a class of people who are better at explaining than understanding, or better at explaining than doing.

You can tell how uninteresting a person is by asking him whom he finds interesting.

Charm is the ability to insult people without offending them; nerdiness the reverse.

Don't cross a river if it is four feet deep on average.

Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that's what you are seeking.

Wit seduces by signaling intelligence without nerdiness.