# Quote — Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes

> Because our minds need to reduce information, we are more likely to try to squeeze a phenomenon into the Procrustean bed of a crisp and known category (amputating the unknown), rather than suspend categorization, and make it tangible. Thanks to our detections of false patterns, along with real ones, what is random will appear less random and more certain—our overactive brains are more likely to impose the wrong, simplistic, narrative than no narrative at all.

- Author: [Nassim Nicholas Taleb](https://www.leafyquotes.com/nassim-nicholas-taleb.md)
- Book: [The Bed of Procrustes](https://www.leafyquotes.com/nassim-nicholas-taleb/the-bed-of-procrustes.md)
- Page: 105
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb#The_Bed_of_Procrustes:_Philosophical_and_Practical_Aphorisms_(2010)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/nassim-nicholas-taleb/the-bed-of-procrustes/because-our-minds

## More from this book

> I have respect for mother nature's methods of robustness (billions of years allow most of what is fragile to break); classical thought is more robust (in its respect for the unknown, the epistemic humility) than the modern post-Enlightenment naïve pseudoscientific autism. Thus my classical values make me advocate the triplet of erudition, elegance, and courage; against modernity’s phoniness, nerdiness and philistinism.

p. 107 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/nassim-nicholas-taleb/the-bed-of-procrustes/i-have-respect.md)

> An idea starts to be interesting when you get scared of taking it to its logical conclusion.

p. 3 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/nassim-nicholas-taleb/the-bed-of-procrustes/an-idea-starts.md)

> A competitive athlete is painful to look at; trying hard to become an animal rather than a man, he will never be as fast as a cheetah or as strong as an ox.

p. 41 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/nassim-nicholas-taleb/the-bed-of-procrustes/a-competitive-athlete.md)