“ A theory is like medicine (or government): often useless, sometimes necessary, always self-serving, and on occasion lethal. So it needs to be used with care, moderation and close adult supervision. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ 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 problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ I suspect the I.Q., SAT, and school grades are tests designed by nerds so they can get high scores in order to call each other intelligent...Smart and wise people who score low on IQ tests, or patentl… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Doctors most commonly get mixed up between absence of evidence and evidence of abense Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ The classical man's worst fear was inglorious death; the modern man's worst fear is just death Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ True humility is when you can surprise yourself more than others; the rest is either shyness or good marketing. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Know how to rank your beliefs not according to their plausibility but by the harm they may cause. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ I am, at the Fed level, libertarian;at the state level, Republican;at the local level, Democrat;and at the family and friends level, a socialist.If that saying doesn’t convince you of the fatuousness… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ You can always mention Wittgenstein since he is vague enough to always seem relevant Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ In the past, only some of the males, but all of the females, were able to procreate. Equality is more natural for females. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ From such examples, I derived the rule that what is called healthy is generally unhealthy, just as social networks are antisocial, and the knowledge-based economy is typically ignorant. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ 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
“ We end up populating what we call the intelligentsia with people who are delusional, literally mentally deranged, simply because they never have to pay for the consequences of their actions, repeating… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Rewriting the history of technology. How, in science, history is rewritten by the losers and how I saw it in my own business and how we can generalize. Does knowledge of biology hurt medicine? Hiding… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Further, the random element in trial and error is not quite random, if it is carried out rationally, using error as a source of information. If every trial provides you with information about what doe… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
