The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Incerto, #2)

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Montaigne was well grounded in the classics and wanted to meditate on life, death, education, knowledge, and some not uninteresting biological aspects of human nature (he wondered, for example, whether cripples had more vigorous libidos owing to the richer circulation of blood in their sexual organs). The tower that became his study was inscribed with Greek and Latin sayings, almost all referring to the vulnerability of human knowledge. Its windows offered a wide vista of the surrounding hills. Montaigne’s subject, officially, was himself, but this was mostly as a means to facilitate the discussion; he was not like those corporate executives who write biographies to make a boastful display of their honors and accomplishments. He was mainly interested in discovering things about himself, making us discover things about himself, and presenting matters that could be generalized—generalized to the entire human race. Among the inscriptions in his study was a remark by the Latin poet Terence: Homo sum, humani a me nil alienum puto—I am a man, and nothing human is foreign to me.