The Bed of Procrustes

The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Second edition
Author	Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Incerto
Subject	aphorisms, philosophy
Genre	Non-fiction
Publisher	Random House (U.S.)
Publication date	November 30, 2010
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Pages	157 pp (paperback)
ISBN	978-0-8129-8240-4 (U.S.)
Preceded by	The Black Swan
Followed by	Antifragile

The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms is a philosophy book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb written in the aphoristic style. It was first released on November 30, 2010 by Random House.^[1] An updated edition was released on October 26, 2016 that includes fifty percent more material than the 2010 edition.^[2] According to Taleb, the book "contrasts the classical values of courage, elegance, and erudition against the modern diseases of nerdiness, philistinism, and phoniness." The title refers to Procrustes, a figure from Greek mythology who abducted travelers and forced them to lie in a special bed.^[3]

The book is part of Taleb's four volume philosophical essay on uncertainty, titled the Incerto and covers the following books: Antifragile (2012), The Black Swan (2007–2010), Fooled by Randomness (2001), and The Bed of Procrustes (2010–2016).

Selected aphorisms

• What fools call “wasting time” is most often the best investment.
• A man without a heroic bent starts dying at the age of thirty.
• 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.
• Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur.
• You can tell how uninteresting a person is by asking him whom he finds interesting.
• Procrastination is the soul rebelling against entrapment.
• Preoccupation with efficacy is the main obstacle to a poetic, elegant, robust and heroic life.
• Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.
• They are born, 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 talk about thinking “outside the box”; and when they die they are put in a box.

References

External links

• Book on author's website
• New York Times review