“ A word on the display of emotions. Almost no one can conceal his emotions. Behavioral scientists believe that one of the main reasons why people become leaders is not from what skills they seem to pos… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ A very intelligent group of revolutionary fellows in the United Kingdom created a political movement called the Fabian Society, named after the Cunctator, based on opportunistically delaying the revol… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ A theory is like medicine or government: often useless, sometimes necessary, always self-serving and, on occasion, lethal. It needs to be used with care, moderation and close adult supervision. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ A man is honorable in proportion to the personal risks he takes for his opinion—in other words, the amount of downside he is exposed to. To sum him up, Nero believed in erudition, aesthetics, and risk… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ A donkey equally famished and thirsty caught at an equal distance between food and water would unavoidably die of hunger or thirst. But he can be saved thanks to a random nudge one way or the other. T… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ A cluster of municipalities with charming provincial enmities, their own internal fights, and people out to get one another aggregates to a quite benign and stable state. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ . . the world in which we live has an increasing number of feedback loops, causing events to be the cause of more events (say, people buy a book because other people bought it), thus generating snowba… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ The error in reasoning is a bit from wishful thinking, because education is considered good; I wonder why people don’t make the epiphenomenal association between the wealth of a country and something… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Independence is person-specific: I have always been taken aback at the high number of people in whom an astonishingly high income led to additional sycophancy as they became more dependent on their cl… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Înfruntați-vă destinul. M-am obișnuit să rezist tentației de a alerga pentru a-mi respecta orarul. Poate fi un sfat neimportant, dar s-a dovedit valabil. Refuzând să alerg pentru a prinde trenuri, am… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ ¿Significa esto que todos deberíamos convertirnos en jugadores durante una temporada, aprovechar la amabilidad que la dama de la fortuna muestra con los que empiezan, y luego parar? La respuesta es no… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ Your happiness depends far more on the number of instances of positive feelings, what psychologists call positive affect, than on their intensity when they hit. In Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ You cannot separate knowledge from contact with the ground. Actually, you cannot separate anything from contact with the ground. And the contact with the real world is done via skin in the game—having… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ What Mother Nature does is rigorous until proven otherwise; what humans and science do is flawed until proven otherwise. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ We are not learning from a mere thousand days, but benefiting, thanks to evolution, from the learning of our ancestors—which found its way into our biology. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ The more interesting their conversation, the more cultured they are, the more they will be trapped into thinking that they are effective at what they are doing in real business (something psychologist… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ The more cultured they are, the more they will be trapped into thinking that they are effective at what they are doing in real business (something psychologists call the halo effect, the mistake of th… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ The iatrogenics is in the patient, not in the treatment. If the patient is close to death, all speculative treatments should be encouraged—no holds barred. Conversely, if the patient is near healthy,… Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ The cycles of risk taking in the economy as following a pattern: stability and absence of crises encourage risk taking, complacency, and lowered awareness of the possibility of problems. Then Nassim Nicholas Taleb
