Nassim Nicholas Taleb > Quotes

“It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“Love without sacrifice is like theft”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“When you develop your opinions on the basis of weak evidence, you will have difficulty interpreting subsequent information that contradicts these opinions, even if this new information is obviously more accurate.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“Things always become obvious after the fact”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Half of the people lie with their lips; the other half with their tears”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore, professore dottore Eco, what a library you have ! How many of these books have you read?” and the others - a very small minority - who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you don’t know as your financial means, mortgage rates and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menancingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“Charm is the ability to insult people without offending them; nerdiness the reverse”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“If you want to annoy a poet, explain his poetry.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

“The best way to measure the loss of intellectual sophistication - this "nerdification," to put it bluntly - is in the growing disappearance of sarcasm, as mechanic minds take insults a bit too literally.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Remember that you are a Black Swan.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“Doctors most commonly get mixed up between absence of evidence and evidence of abense”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“What I learned on my own I still remember”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“If you hear a "prominent" economist using the word 'equilibrium,' or 'normal distribution,' do not argue with him; just ignore him, or try to put a rat down his shirt.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“Wit seduces by signaling intelligence without nerdiness.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“The inability to predict outliers implies the inability to predict the course of history”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market alow you to put there.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“When you beat up someone physically, you get excercise and stress relief; when you assault him verbally on the Internet, you just harm yourself.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“They think that intelligence is about noticing things are relevant (detecting patterns); in a complex world, intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant (avoiding false patterns)”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Probability and expectation are not the same. Its probability and probability times the pay off.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“People focus on role models; it is more effective to find antimodels - people you don't want to resemble when you grow up”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“A prophet is not someone with special visions, just someone blind to most of what others see”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“To bankrupt a fool, give him information.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“What organized dating sites fail to understand is that the people are far more interesting in what they don't say about themselves.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“They will envy you for your success, your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status - but rarely for your wisdom.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“My best definition of a nerd: someone who asks you to explain an aphorism”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb