“ We grossly overestimate the length of the effect of misfortune on our lives. You think that the loss of your fortune or current position will be devastating, but you are probably wrong. More likely, y… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Their three flaws: 1) they think in statics not dynamics, 2) they think in low, not high, dimensions, 3) they think in terms of actions, never interactions. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ The world as a whole has never been richer, and it has never been more heavily in debt, living off borrowed money. The record shows that, for society, the richer we become, the harder it get to live w… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ The strategy for the discoverers and entrepreneurs is to rely less on top-down planning and focus on maximum tinkering and recognizing opportunities when they present themselves. So I disagree with th… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ The problem of lumpy payoffs is not so much in the lack of income they entail, but the pecking order, the loss of dignity, the subtle humiliations near the watercooler. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ The principle of intervention, like that of healers, is first do no harm (primum non nocere); even more, we will argue, those who don’t take risks should never be involved in making decisions. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ The first leg of the triplet is the pathology of thinking that the world in which we live is more understandable, more explainable, and therefore more predictable than it actually is. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ The first heuristic addresses the asymmetry in rewards and punishment, or transfer of fragility between individuals. Ralph Nader has a simple rule: people voting for war need to have at least one desc… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ The entire notion of biography is grounded in the arbitrary ascription of a causal relation between specified traits and subsequent events. Now Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ The difference between slaves in Roman and Ottoman days and today’s employees is that slaves did not need to flatter their boss. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ The curse of modernity is that we are increasingly populated by a class of people who are better at explaining than understanding, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ The Procrustean bed in life consists precisely in simplifying the non-linear and making it linear—the simplification that distorts. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ The French thinker and poet Paul Valery was surprised to listen to a commentary of his poems that found meanings that had until then escaped him (of course, it was pointed out to him that these were i… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ The Black Swans we imagine, discuss, and worry about do not resemble those likely to be Black Swans. We worry about the wrong improbable events, as Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Stoicism, seen this way, becomes pure robustness—for the attainment of a state of immunity from one’s external circumstances, good or bad, and an absence of fragility to decisions made by fate, is rob… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Statin drugs are meant to lower cholesterol in your blood. But there is an asymmetry, and a severe one. One needs to treat fifty high risk persons for five years to avoid a single cardiovascular event… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Someone with a high public presence who is controversial and takes risks for his opinion is less likely to be a bullshit vendor. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Some business bets in which one wins big but infrequently, yet loses small but frequently, are worth making if others are suckers for them and if you have the personal and intellectual stamina. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ So we can learn a lot from data—but not as much as we expect. Sometimes a lot of data can be meaningless; at other times one single piece of information can be very meaningful. It Nassim Nicholas Taleb
