“ Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Governments are wasting billions of dollars on attempting to predict events that are produced by interdependent systems and are therefore not statistically understandable at the individual level. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Further, many writers and scholars speak in private, say, after half a bottle of wine, differently from the way they do in print. Their writing is certifiably fake, fake. And many of the problems of s… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ For if you think that education causes wealth, rather than being a result of wealth, or that intelligent actions and discoveries are the result of intelligent ideas, you will be in for a surprise. Let… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Experience is devoid of the cherry-picking that we find in studies, particularly those called observational, ones in which the researcher finds past patterns, and, thanks to the sheer amount of data,… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Compromising is condoning. The only modern dictum I follow is one by George Santayana: A man is morally free when … he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity. This is no… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ By setting oneself totally free of constraints, free of thoughts, free of this debilitating activity called work, free of efforts, elements hidden in the texture of reality start staring at you; then… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ But they never notice the following inconsistency: this so-called worst-case event, when it happened, exceeded the worst case at the time. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ But simplicity is not so simple to attain. Steve Jobs figured out that you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. The Arabs have an expression for trenchant prose: no skill to… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Beyond our perceptional distortions, there is a problem with logic itself. How can someone have no clue yet be able to hold a set of perfectly sound and coherent viewpoints that match the observations… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Asking science to explain life and vital matters is equivalent to asking a grammarian to explain poetry. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ As to liquid, my rule is drink no liquid that is not at least a thousand years old—so its fitness has been tested. I drink just wine, water, and coffee. No soft drinks. Perhaps the most possibly decei… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ As Ennius wrote, The good is mostly in the absence of bad; Nimium boni est, cui nihil est mali. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Anyone looking for confirmation will find enough of it to deceive himself—and no doubt his peers.* Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Almost all those caught making a logical fallacy interpret it as a disagreement. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Academics are only useful when they try to be useless (say, as in mathematics and philosophy) and dangerous when they try to be useful. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ A squeeze occurs when people have no choice but to do something, and do it right away, regardless of the costs. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ A saying by the brothers Geoff and Vince Graham summarizes the ludicrousness of scale-free political universalism. I am, at the Fed level, libertarian; at the state level, Republican; at the local lev… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
