Keeping ones distance from an ignorant person is equivalent to keeping company with a wise man. - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Solution for the Christmas binge: Fast 45 hours, visit the gym during the fast, and you are done.

A lesson I learned from this ancient culture is the notion of megalopsychon (a term expressed in Aristotle’s ethics), a sense of grandeur that was superseded by the Christian value of “humility.” There is no word for it in Romance languages; in Arabic it is called Shhm — best translated as nonsmall. If you take risks and face your fate with dignity, there is nothing you can do that makes you small; if you don’t take risks, there is nothing you can do that makes you grand, nothing.

He who has never sinned is less reliable than he who has only sinned once. The antifragility of the higher level may require the fragility and sacrifice of the lower one.