Sublime

Good values are 1) reality-based, 2) socially constructive, and 3) immediate and controllable. Bad values are 1) superstitious, 2) socially destructive, and 3) not immediate or controllable.

they are black-and-white, binary, discrete, and allow no shadow. You cannot steal “a little bit” or murder “moderately”—just as you cannot keep kosher and eat “just a little bit” of pork at Sunday barbecues.

But there’s only one way to stay wealthy: some combination of frugality and paranoia.

he explores this psychology The True Believer (1951). It might seem from that title that Hoffer is talking about something quite similar, if not identical, to the kind of delusion Marian Keech’s followers suffered from. But it is not so dramatic; it is perhaps even less dramatic than the sort of thing that prompts a South Sea Bubble, most participa

Les gens de ce milieu pouvaient être de vrais cinglés. Un fonds n’était rien d’autre qu’un culte doté de sa propre bible, de sa propre emprise rituelle sur les esprits, et de ses propres épreuves de force. Un de ses collègues qui travaillait pour un autre fonds, geek milliardaire en devenir, jouait du piano dans un rade de troisième ordre en faisan