Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes

Our greatest asset is the one we distrust the most: the built-in antifragility of certain risk-taking systems.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

• Risk

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Quotes to Explore

• I cannot determine what people or nations should do, but I do think that extremism gives birth to following and subsequent extremism.

  

  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
  • People
  • Think
  • Birth

• I've always been a writer, and in high school, I was the editor of my school newspaper and I got a writing scholarship. It's always been a passion of mine.

  

  Zoe Lister-Jones
  • Writing
  • School
  • High

• You can't hold back. You can't think of the subtleties of playing. You just have to get out and really bare it all, and hopefully you don't fall off the plank. And if you do, hey, pick yourself up, dust yourself down, and start all over again.

  

  Malcolm McDowell
  • Up
  • Think
  • Fall

• The kids from the streets don't want preaching or messages. They want what they can identify with. They want to hear about the reality of their situation, not fairy tales. They don't care if it's ugly; they just want reality.

  

  Eric Lynn Wright
  • Kids
  • Reality
  • Care

• And the invention of transformations of certain figures has become the most important in musical composition.

  

  Karlheinz Stockhausen
  • Important
  • Become
  • Invention

• Saving Milly was a break from this effort because I felt that it was time to be part of something that could shed light on a disease everyone feels they know, when most know so little.

  

  Madeleine Stowe
  • Time
  • Light
  • Effort

• An epic is not made by piecing together a set of heroic lays, adjusting their discrepancies and making them into a continuous narrative.

  

  Lascelles Abercrombie
  • Together
  • Heroic
  • Epic

• If it wasn't for golf, I'd probably still be peddling jewelry or be in the sugar mills somewhere.

  

  Calvin Peete
  • Golf
  • Jewelry
  • Sugar

• At school I got teased because I was so thin and awkward-looking. But the girls on TV looked similar to me. I would say to my mum, 'The girls at school are teasing me, but I look like those girls on TV.'

  

  Candice Swanepoel
  • School
  • Me
  • Girls

• I can't deal with someone flashy. That's so not me.

  

  Kate Bosworth
  • Me
  • Deal
  • Someone

• I myself prefer my New Zealand eggs for breakfast.

  

  Queen Elizabeth II
  • Myself
  • New
  • Breakfast

• Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.

  

  Nadine Gordimer
  • Imagination
  • Forever
  • Brand

• For it is we who must pray for our daily bread, and if He grants it to us, it is only through our labour, our skill and preparation.

  

  Paracelsus
  • Daily
  • Preparation
  • Bread

• People just kind of associate me with kicking some ass.

  

  Yancy Butler
  • People
  • Kind
  • Ass

• Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.

  

  Beatrix Potter
  • School
  • Never
  • Goodness

• But death's acquisitive instincts will win.

  

  Harold Brodkey
  • Death
  • Win
  • Instincts

• If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living.

  

  Gail Sheehy
  • Change
  • Living
  • Grow

• The thought of somebody pulling and cutting around my face gives me stomach ache. Plastic surgery would be so painful. What if it doesn't look good? What if they made a mistake? I couldn't do it.

  

  Salma Hayek
  • Good
  • Mistake
  • Thought

• Discrimination is alive and soaring.

  

  Jonathan Kozol

• I may not be the bestest pitcher in the world, but I sure out-cutes 'em.

  

  Satchel Paige
  • Pitcher

• I have Tourettes and Aspergers, but Tourrets and Aspergers don't have me. You know, I'm doing what I can to suppress it and I don't let it take advantage of me. It's not who I am. You know, I'm James Durbin. Like I said in the beginning, I am here to show America who I am, and it is what it is.

  

  James Durbin Quiet Riot
  • America
  • Beginning

• I've got a friend who is a lion tamer. He used to be a school teacher till he lost his nerve.

  

  Les Dawson
  • School
  • Lost
  • Friend

• I mean, Emily Harris was his wife. And she seemed to resent his leadership, but on the other hand, she felt like a good soldier, that he had to be the leader.

  

  Patty Hearst
  • Good
  • She
  • Hand

• Our greatest asset is the one we distrust the most: the built-in antifragility of certain risk-taking systems.

  

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  • Risk