WIST Quotations

Taleb, Nassim Nicholas -- The Black Swan, Part 1, ch. 1 “The Apprenticeship of an Empirical Skeptic” (2007)

Dave — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 18:17:55 +0000

Categorizing is necessary for humans, but it becomes pathological when the category is seen as definitive, preventing people from considering the fuzziness of boundaries, let alone revising their categories.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (b. 1960) Lebanese-American essayist, statistician, risk analyst, aphorist
The Black Swan, Part 1, ch. 1 “The Apprenticeship of an Empirical Skeptic” (2007)
(Source)

Pasternak, Boris -- Doctor Zhivago [До́ктор Жива́го], Part 2, ch. 9 “Varykino,” sec. 4 [Yuri] (1955) [tr. Hayward & Harari (1958), US ed.]

Dave — Tue, 02 Apr 2024 18:00:17 +0000

It’s a good thing when a man is different from your image of him. It shows he isn’t a type. If he were, it would be the end of him as a man. But if you can’t place him in a category, it means that at least a part of him is what a human being ought to be. He has risen above himself, he has a grain of immortality.

Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator
Doctor Zhivago [До́ктор Жива́го], Part 2, ch. 9 “Varykino,” sec. 4 [Yuri] (1955) [tr. Hayward & Harari (1958), US ed.]
(Source)

Alternate translations:

It’s a good thing when a man is different from your image of him. It shows he isn’t a type. If he were, it would be the end of him as a man. But if you can’t place him in a category, it means that at least a part of him is what a human being ought to be. He has a grain of immortality.
[tr. Hayward & Harari (1958), UK ed.]

It’s good when a man deceives your expectations, when he doesn’t correspond to the preconceived notion of him. To belong to a type is the end of a man, his condemnation. If he doesn’t fall under any category, if he’s not representative, half of what’s demanded of him is there. He’s free of himself, he has achieved a grain of immortality.
[tr. Pevear & Volokhonsky (2010)]

Brust, Steven -- Issola (2001)

Dave — Sat, 27 Aug 2016 00:12:09 +0000

Categories, if you’ll excuse a brief digression, are a useful way to get a handle on things you don’t understand, as long as you don’t get too attached to them and forget that things like to pop out of one category and into another, and that sometimes the whole category turns itself inside out and becomes something different. It’s useful, for example, to categorize your target as a sorcerer, if he is one; but if you get too attached to your category it’ll leave you embarrassed when he suddenly pulls a knife on you.

Steven Brust (b. 1955) American writer, systems programmer
Issola (2001)

Sayers, Dorothy -- Speech (1938), “Are Women Human?” to a Women’s Society

Dave — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:31:37 +0000

What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person.

Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957) English author, translator
Speech (1938), “Are Women Human?” to a Women’s Society
(Source)

Collected in Unpopular Opinions (1946).