Doug > Doug's Quotes

“Louisiana is a fresh-air mental asylum.”
― James Lee Burke, Pegasus Descending

“If I could open up my own bookstore? I’d open a place that’s only for people who really love books. All genres would be welcome, but there would be no paperbacks in the whole place – and if you rip a dust cover, you’re banned for life.”
― Jen Campbell, The Bookshop Book

“If I could sum up the message of this book in one pithy phrase, it would be that you are smarter than your data. Data do not understand causes and effects; humans do.”
― Judea Pearl, The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect

“The business of philosophy is to teach man to live in uncertainty... not to reassure him, but to upset him.”
― Lev Shestov, All Things are Possible

“How much you truly “believe” in something can be manifested only through what you are willing to risk for it.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

“Alexander said that it was preferable to have an army of sheep led by a lion than an army of lions led by a sheep.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

“Beware of the person who gives advice, telling you that a certain action on your part is “good for you” while it is also good for him, while the harm to you doesn’t directly affect him.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

“Don’t tell me what you think, tell me what you have in your portfolio.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

“Let us return to pathemata mathemata (learning through pain) and consider its reverse: learning through thrills and pleasure. People have two brains, one when there is skin in the game, one when there is none. Skin in the game can make boring things less boring. When you have skin in the game, dull things like checking the safety of the aircraft because you may be forced to be a passenger in it cease to be boring. If you are an investor in a company, doing ultra-boring things like reading the footnotes of a financial statement (where the real information is to be found) becomes, well, almost not boring.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

“It is no secret that large corporations prefer people with families; those with downside risk are easier to own, particularly when they are choking under a large mortgage.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

“formation of moral values in society doesn’t come from the evolution of the consensus. No, it is the most intolerant person who imposes virtue on others precisely because of that intolerance.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

“Having an assistant (except for the strictly necessary) removes your soul from the game.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

“Yes, an intolerant minority can control and destroy democracy. Actually, it will eventually destroy our world. So, we need to be more than intolerant with some intolerant minorities. Simply, they violate the Silver Rule. It is not permissible to use “American values” or “Western principles” in treating intolerant Salafism (which denies other peoples’ right to have their own religion). The West is currently in the process of committing suicide.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

“You will never fully convince someone that he is wrong; only reality can.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

“What matters isn't what a person has or doesn't have; it is what he or she is afraid of losing.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game: The Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

“Someone who has been employed for a while is giving you strong evidence of submission.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

“If you do not take risks for your opinion, you're nothing.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game: The Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

“The only way we have left to control suicide-terrorists would be precisely to convince them that blowing themselves up is not the worst-case scenario for them, nor the end scenario at all. Making their families and loved ones bear a financial burden—just as Germans still pay for war crimes—would immediately add consequences to their actions. The penalty needs to be properly calibrated to be a true disincentive, without imparting any sense of heroism or martyrdom to the families in question.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

“The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game: The Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

“Do not pay attention to what people say, only to what they do, and how much of their necks they are putting on the line.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game: The Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

“Atheists are just modern versions of religious fundamentalists: both take religion too literally.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“You can replace lies with truth; but myth is only displaced with a narrative.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“You know why they stay asleep? Because all those cameras, clean-cut anchors, Ivy League educations, graphics, resources, high-rise buildings, decades of being in my living room — it’s IMPOSSIBLE that they could be controlled by a criminal super-mafia trying to destroy the world.”
― Martin Geddes, Open Your Mind to Change: A Guidebook to the Great Awakening

“Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs
that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.
— Niccolò Machiavelli”
― Martin Geddes, Open Your Mind to Change: A Guidebook to the Great Awakening

“Cletus Purcel.” “What’s wrong with Clete?” “What’s right with him?” “Give it a break, Lucinda.” “He tried to turn somebody into a human bell clapper. Do you know a character by the name of Dogshit Dolowitz?” “No Duh Dolowitz, the merry prankster?” “Yeah, I guess he’s called that, too. Your friend crammed a garbage can over his head, then pounded the can all over an alley with a baseball bat.” “What for?” “Ask him . . . Wait a minute.” She set the phone down and closed a door. “Listen, Detective, Nate Baxter would like to put your buddy’s ham hocks in a skillet. I’d have a serious talk with him.”
― James Lee Burke, Dixie City Jam

“What might be considered irrational, abnormal, aberrant, ludicrous, illogical, bizarre, schizoid, or schizophrenic to earth people (which is what AAs call nonalcoholics) is usually considered fairly normal by AA members.”
― James Lee Burke, In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead

“L.A. burns, and so many other cities smolder, waiting for the hose that will flood gasoline over the coals, and we listen to politicians who fuel our hate and our narrow views and tell us it’s simply a matter of getting back to basics while they sit in their beachfront properties and listen to the surf so they won’t have to hear the screams of the drowning.”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“They don’t respect us because we are their molested children. They fuck us morning, noon, and night, but as long as they tuck us in with a kiss, as long as they whisper into our ears, “Daddy loves you, Daddy will take care of you,” we close our eyes and go to sleep, trading our bodies, our souls, for the comforting veneers of “civilization” and “security,” the false idols of our twentieth-century wet dream.”
― Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

“I started thinking about the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which was also visible in the distance. Click, click, click, twenty-one times, stop; turn around; pause twenty-one seconds; repeat. Click, click, click, twenty-one times, stop; turn around; pause twenty-one seconds; repeat. The heels of the guard on duty at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier click on the pavement twenty-four hours straight, seven days a week, 365 days a year, year in and year out. Rain, sleet, or snow never interrupts this routine. The only time it is interrupted is during the changing of the guard, which happens every thirty minutes. The whole routine then resumes until the next relief. There is much more behind the symbolism, sacrifices, and commitments of these dedicated warriors, but that’s a whole other story in itself.”
― Paul Landis, The Final Witness: A Kennedy Secret Service Agent Breaks His Silence After Sixty Years