anything that has more upside than downside from random events (or certain shocks) is antifragile; the reverse is fragile. - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

It seemed, wrote Machiavelli, that in the midst of murders and civil wars, our republic became stronger [and] its citizens infused with virtues. … A little bit of agitation gives resources to souls and what makes the species prosper isn’t peace, but freedom.

There is a historical constant: no amount of wealth can liberate a third-rate thinker from intellectual envy or from the deeply degrading sense of scholarly inferiority -- that feeling of impoverished erudition.
No amount of wealth.

There is no worse vice than one that imitates virtue; worst of all is the one that claims virtue: virtue signaling.