Ana

“I was once watching a herring gull through binoculars side by side with Bill. In those days, a herring gull could not scratch itself without one of us asking why natural selection favored that behavior. In any case, I offered as an explanation for the ongoing gull behavior something that was nonfunctional and suggested that the animal was not capable of acting in its own self-interest. Bill said quietly, “Never assume the animal you are studying is as stupid as the one studying it.” I remember looking sideways at him and saying to myself “Yes sir! I like this person. I can learn from him.”
― Robert Trivers, Wild Life: Adventures of an Evolutionary Biologist

“if you look someone in the eye and call them a ‘fat, worthless, syphilitic puddle of badger crap’ it doesn’t mean you don’t like them. It can be – and often is – a term of endearment.”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“What matters isn’t what a person has or doesn’t have; it is what he or she is afraid of losing.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

“If there is something in nature you don't understand, odds are it makes sense in a deeper way that is beyond your understanding. So there is a logic to natural things that is much superior to our own. Just as there is a dichotomy in law: 'innocent until proven guilty' as opposed to 'guilty until proven innocent', let me express my rule as follows: what Mother Nature does is rigorous until proven otherwise; what humans and science do is flawed until proven otherwise.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder