Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes
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If I could predict what my day would exactly look like, I would feel a little bit dead.
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A theory is a very dangerous thing to have.
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Using leverage to cure the problems of too much leverage is not homeopathy, it is denial. The debt crisis is not a temporary problem, it is a structural one. We need rehab.
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Don't cross a river if it is four feet deep on average.
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The economics establishment (universities, regulators, central bankers, government officials, various organisations staffed with economists) lost its legitimacy with the failure of the system. It is irresponsible and foolish to put our trust in the ability of such experts to get us out of this mess. Instead, find the smart people whose hands are clean.
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This makes living in big cities invaluable because you increase the odds of serendipitous encounters - you gain exposure to the envelope of serendipity.
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Economic life should be definancialised. We should learn not to use markets as storehouses of value: they do not harbour the certainties that normal citizens require. Citizens should experience anxiety about their own businesses (which they control), not their investments (which they do not control).
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It’s harder to say no when you really mean it.
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Economics is a narrative discipline, and explanations are easy to fit retrospectively. (page 257)
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Few understand that procrastination is our natural defense, letting things take care of themselves and exercise their antifragility.
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What fools call 'wasting time' is most often the best investment.
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An idea starts to be interesting when you get scared of taking it to its logical conclusion.
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You exist if and only if you are free to do things without a visible objective, with no justification and, above all, outside the dictatorship of someone else’s narrative.
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He who has never sinned is less reliable than he who has only sinned once.
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Much of aging comes from a misunderstanding of the effect of comfort.
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Daily news and sugar confuse our system in the same manner.
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What is nonmeasurable and nonpredictable will remain nonmeasurable and nonpredictable ... no matter how much hate mail I get.
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Probability is not about the odds, but about the belief in the existence of an alternative outcome, cause, or motive.
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It is painful to think about ruthlessness as an engine of improvement.
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You may not be able to change the world but can at least get some entertainment and make a living out of the epistemic arrogance of the human race.
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You can tell how uninteresting a person is by asking him whom he finds interesting.
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Much of modern life is preventable chronic stress injury.
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When some systems are stuck in a dangerous impasse, randomness and only randomness can unlock them and set them free.
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People used to wear ordinary clothes weekdays, and formal attire on Sunday. Today it is the exact reverse.