Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes

It’s harder to say no when you really mean it.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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• Claiming to 'fight for small business' is often used as a political tool in Washington D.C., but it is actually the policies behind that battle cry that small firms care about.

  

  Sam Graves
  • Business
  • Political
  • Small

• There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment.

  

  Yamamoto Tsunetomo
  • Life
  • Live
  • True

• Second place is just the first place loser.

  

  Dale Earnhardt
  • Place
  • Loser
  • Second Place

• I love and adore being a mother. It's the greatest gift I've ever been given.

  

  Uma Thurman
  • Love
  • Mother
  • Gift

• It's tough when you have to be away. But I'm probably at home more than my dad was because he was working two or three jobs sometimes.

  

  Forest Whitaker
  • Home
  • Dad
  • Tough

• I think we're socialized out of being women, and then we have to find our way back to it. That's hard to do.

  

  Olympia Dukakis
  • Women
  • Think
  • Find

• Pfft, I hate Christmas Day. It's for children and families. Not for people like me.

  

  Karl Lagerfeld
  • People
  • Children
  • Hate

• I am only 33, I've got a lot to do. This is the first half of my career. I'm looking forward to the future and I'm proud about the past.

  

  Ice Cube
  • Future
  • Career
  • Past

• If men possessed wisdom, which stands in the same relation to the form of man as the sight to the eye, they would not cause any injury to themselves or to others; for the knowledge of truth removes hatred and quarrels, and prevents mutual injuries.

  

  Maimonides
  • Men
  • Truth
  • Knowledge

• I'm an artist, and I'm a bit weird, and I'm probably a bit eccentric.

  

  FKA twigs
  • Artist
  • Weird
  • Bit

• Be real with yourself in whatever area of your life and your game that you need improvement on. Once you figure that out, you just have to go out and work on it. For me, it's footwork. I constantly work on it, and it's a never-ending process.

  

  Calvin Johnson
  • Life
  • Work
  • Real

• The Web provides a very easy way to immediately grasp what's going on. It really offers the transparency, so you can see, especially with the search engine, how people are using Twitter at one glance. The phone doesn't allow for that.

  

  Jack Dorsey
  • People
  • Search
  • Transparency

• The development of physics, like the development of any science, is a continuous one.

  

  Owen Chamberlain
  • Science
  • Like
  • Physics

• You'll see me on 'Top Chef' someday. My Midwestern hospitality needs an outlet, you know?

  

  Haley Bennett
  • Know
  • Me
  • See

• I know that my tendency is to be linear, and I'm trying to find ways to subvert that. And so in 'Bellocq's Ophelia' my device for subverting it was to tell the story and then to tell it again; it always circles back to this one moment, and it's not linear, but it's round in that way, and much of 'Native Guard' is like that.

  

  Natasha Trethewey
  • Trying
  • Story
  • Moment

• Many great works of art, poetry, and music are inspired by astral memories. The desire to do noble, beautiful things here on Earth is also often a carryover of astral experiences between a person's earth lives.

  

  Paramahansa Yogananda
  • Great
  • Music
  • Art

• I'm the type of person to put myself in everybody else's shoes.

  

  Young Thug
  • Myself
  • Person
  • Shoes

• Half the world is composed of idiots, the other half of people clever enough to take indecent advantage of them.

  

  Walter Kerr
  • People
  • World
  • Clever

• If we care about family stability, if we care about community stability, then we need fewer evictions.

  

  Matthew Desmond
  • Family
  • Community

• Painting and sculpture are very archaic forms. It's the only thing left in our industrial society where an individual alone can make something with not just his own hands, but brains, imagination, heart maybe.

  

  Philip Guston
  • Heart
  • Society
  • Alone

• It takes a very strong brain to resist the absolutes, the myths that the media and the politicians peddle - the idea that if you are too kind, where does it all end? That not to help someone is somehow a good idea.

  

  Peter Mullan
  • Good
  • Help
  • Strong

• However, I believe that it would be difficult to have legitimate scientists agree to participate.

  

  James Randi
  • Believe

• It’s harder to say no when you really mean it.

  

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb