Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes
Forecasting by bureaucrats tends to be used for anxiety relief rather than for adequate policy making.
Quotes to Explore
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I discovered Einstein said the same thing about his celebrated theories of relativity that writers say about their work when he said he didn't have any feelings of personal possession of these ideas. Once they were out there, they came from somewhere else. And that's exactly the feeling when you write. You don't feel possessive about it.
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A race is what zoologists term a variety or subdivision of a species.
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Humility is the gateway into the grace and the favor of God.
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Meditation is difficult for many people because their thoughts are always on some distant object or place. One form of meditation is to label the thought as it appears and then choose to let it go.
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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
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I don't think I realized the extremes of my proportions until I moved to Paris. I thought I'd be 'normal' as a model, but actually, even in that world, I was at one end of the spectrum.
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What we call a poem is mostly what is not there on the page. The strength of any poem is the poems that it has managed to exclude.
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I look for absurdly simple plots so that I can simply focus on the characters. Having an understanding of what dialogue's easy to say and hard to say - I think that that's helpful, too.
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My college friends call me Karu, which is the worst. Only in our country can we make a short form for a short name. But otherwise, I've never had a pet name all my life. But now, in official meetings, someone will call me KJo. And I'll judge that person in my head. Just call me Karan.
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I never go wild with nails.
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What I have experienced over time is that environmental problems are easier to deal with in ways that don't go into their interconnections to the rest of what we are.
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Cannes is a sort of gladiators' arena, and that's the fun part of it. When you accept to come here to open the festival, you know you are going to be criticised. I have no problem with the fact that I expose myself and the movie, and it's normal that I can disagree with the way some people feel.
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There are times when the writers ask us to improvise. Sometimes the animators are inspired by what you do, and sometimes you are inspired by what the animators do.
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If I see Marian Keyes' books or Patricia Scanlan's books given more prominence than mine in the bookstore, I'll move mine to the front. I've told them I do this, and they've confessed to doing the same thing to me.
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I've never wanted to be famous. That has never been a part of any dream. I do remember being little and thinking I might want to be a singer. But not a famous singer - just, like, a singer.
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Beauty ought to look a little surprised: it is the emotion that best suits her face. The beauty who does not look surprised, who accepts her position as her due - she reminds us too much of a prima donna.
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Like a precious family heirloom, freedom is not just ours to enjoy, but to treasure, protect, and pass on to future generations.
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Every woman feels she is too old and has missed the boat.
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I find it hard to be labelled in this new 'super-rich' category because we all grew up with very little. The idea that 'to get rich is glorious' is really a new phenomenon. I certainly didn't grow up like that.
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For the first time I understood the haunting beauty of the song. It was the song of a killer who longed to die. It was the song of justice yearned for but not yet done.
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If I am looking to impress people, I'll be in a Rent the Runway dress and great accessories.
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Even though you can't expect to defeat the absurdity of the world, you must make the attempt. That's morality, that's religion, that's art, that's life.
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New diseases like SARS and bird flu cause anxiety in the community. People get worried, some to the extent that it even affects their health. You feel very sad, and yet you must carry on and maintain your cool in very trying and difficult moments. You have to tough it out.
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Forecasting by bureaucrats tends to be used for anxiety relief rather than for adequate policy making.
