Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes
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The fool generalizes the particular; the nerd particularizes the general; ... the wise does neither.
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What they call 'play' (gym, travel, sports) looks like work.
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We tend to use knowledge as therapy.
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It takes extraordinary wisdom and self-control to accept that many things have a logic we do not understand that is smarter than our own.
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If you take risks and face your fate with dignity, there is nothing you can do that makes you small; if you don't take risks, there is nothing you can do that makes you grand, nothing.
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I want to live happily in a world I don't understand.
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Deficits are like putting dynamite in the hands of children. They can get out of control very quickly.
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There is a saying that bad traders divorce their spouse sooner than abandon their positions. Loyalty to ideas is not a good thing for traders, scientists - or anyone.
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For the robust, an error is information.
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It is the asymmetry of the bonus system that got us here. No incentives without disincentives: capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards.
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But it remains the case that you know what is wrong with a lot more confidence than you know what is right.
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Greatness starts with the replacement of hatred with polite disdain.
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The best test of whether someone is extremely stupid (or extremely wise) is whether financial and political news makes sense to him.
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Asking science to explain life and vital matters is equivalent to asking a grammarian to explain poetry.
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Wit seduces by signaling intelligence without nerdiness.
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The tragedy of virtue is that the more obvious, boring, unoriginal, and sermonizing the proverb, the harder it is to implement.
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The difference between slaves in Roman and Ottoman days and today’s employees is that slaves did not need to flatter their boss.
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Mild success can be explainable by skills and labor. Wild success is attributable to variance.
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Failure saves lives. In the airline industry, every time a plane crashes the probability of the next crash is lowered by that. The Titanic saved lives because we're building bigger and bigger ships. So these people died, but we have effectively improved the safety of the system, and nothing failed in vain.
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Forecasting by bureaucrats tends to be used for anxiety relief rather than for adequate policy making.
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Lucky fools do not bear the slightest suspicion that they may be lucky fools - by definition, they do not know that they belong to such a category.
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If humans fight the last war, nature fights the next one.
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I always remind myself that what one observes is at best a combination of variance and returns, not just returns.
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Just as being nice to the arrogant is no better than being arrogant toward the nice; being accommodating toward anyone committing a nefarious action condones it.