(All aphorisms can be seen here; after three, the theme's full list can be seen via the highlighted title's link)
Aging:
- The first thing to go when aging is imagination.
- Most people say “this is who I am now” around 30, and stop growing.
- Most meet most of their friends before 25.
- Life is a dinner conversation.
- For many, people are space-fillers once a phone’s dopamine hit subsides.
- The best conversationalists never lost childhood's wonder and beginners mind.
Decision-making:
- Knowing what to do next takes time.
- Commit only to what you can sustain.
- Rationalizations cover for emotional reasoning.
- Friends see your blind spots, and show you.
- Buying someone a meal never disappoints.
- Avoid humorless people.
- Most misery is self-made.
- Depression arrives when growth is hindered.
- Pagers used to be seem as annoyances, an intrusion into private life - people are now pinged dozens of time a day and wonder why their anxiety is up.
- Those who are too nice, too appeasing, violate a rule of healthy relations: equality, and mutual skin in the game.
- The passive aggressive are sensitive souls, dying to stand up for themselves.
- The sign of an insecure know-it-all: in small groups, they lecture, rather than converse. A slight tension is in the air.
- People who think tattoos are unwise often recommend marriage.
- The result of wisdom and wealth is the ability to pursue intrinsic enjoyments, indefinitely.
- An empty calendar is a peaceful mind.
- When dating, find someone that falls into your “must-have” attraction zone; then, pick for character and personality.
- People want to be desired; this, mostly, is what makes a great lover.
- Men are best appreciated by older women, slightly past their prime.
Organizations:
- Benevolence or malice, leadership or its abdication, trickle down from the top.
- Is your “love” just obsession by another name?
- Do people have ideas, or do ideas have people?
- Compared to what (when assessing the quality of any system)?
- Know yourself - the First Amendment of every autonomous person.
- The ultimate power is the ability to say "no."
- You want to be known for signal, not noise.
- For couples, emphasize growth, not fusion.
- The best friends, lovers, family members bring out and encourage the best in you.
- Your most important relationship is the one you have with yourself; surround yourself with those who respect that, and don’t ask you to sacrifice your authenticity and autonomy.
- To flourish, merge the best of modernity with the best of our ancestral foragers.
- The modern rebel resists cheap dopamine, relishes silent solitude, and cultivates a long attention span; technology is their slave, not the inverse.
- Politicians lambast identity politics, then castigate "the Democrats" or "the Republicans."
- The trouble isn’t knowing the truth, it’s learning how to deliver it with decency and courage.
- People tend not to skew towards the truth, but to what’s incentivized.
- Beware of teachers who complicate; genius is in simplicity.
- The ultimate wealth is time wealth.
- The purpose of money is autonomy.
- To create wealth and take asymmetric risks, extend the early 20’s lifestyle for 15 years.