Decomposition, for most, starts when they leave the free, social, and uncorrupted college life for the solitary confinement of professions and nuclear… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“what I was given to study in school I have forgotten; what I decided to read on my own, I still remember.” — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
I hated school because I liked to daydream and the system tried to stop me from that. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love; close enough on the surface but, to the nonsucker, not exactly the same… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“As the skeptics’ main teaching was that nothing could be accepted with certainty, conclusions of various degrees of probability could be formed,… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg didn't finish college. Too much emphasis is placed on formal education - I told my… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
If one puts an infinite number of monkeys in front of typewriters, and lets them clap away, there is a certainty that… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“Serious empirical investigation (largely thanks to one Lant Pritchet, then a World Bank economist) shows no evidence that raising the general level… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
As countries get rich they start increasing education and the very educated people tend to not like trial and error, because they… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“The British government documents, as early as fifty years ago, an aim for education other than the one we have today: raising… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“As a child of civil war, I disbelieve in structured learning—actually I believe that one can be an intellectual without being a… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
I suspect the I.Q., SAT, and school grades are tests designed by nerds so they can get high scores in order to… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Many people keep deploring the low level of formal education in the United states (as defined by, say, math grades). Yet these… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“The biologist and intellectual E. O. Wilson was once asked what represented the most hindrance to the development of children; his answer… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“The minute I was bored with a book or a subject I moved to another one, instead of giving up on reading… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Wittgenstein's ruler: Unless you have confidence in the ruler's reliability, if you use a ruler to measure a table you may also be using… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share
In politics we face the choice between warmongering, nation-state loving, big-business agents on one hand; and risk-blind, top-down, epistemic arrogant big servants of large… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share
My nightmare scenario is that the government saves Citibank once again, as well as the other banks, and business resumes as usual. Then, the… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share
Using, as an excuse, others' failure of common sense is in itself a failure of common sense. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share
You know, children philosophize more than adults - and they are critical of adults. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share
“Suckers think that you cure greed with money, addiction with substances, expert problems with experts, banking with bankers, economics with economists, and debt crises… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share
“One needs to go out and buy a lottery ticket in order to win. Does it mean that the work involved in the trip… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share
Individuals should think about the worst-case scenarios and plan for them. The world will be crazier than you think it will be. Put money… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share
“If you are looking for your misplaced wallet in your living room, in a trial and error mode, you exercise rationality by not looking… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share
“Most humans manage to squander their free time, as free time makes them dysfunctional, lazy, and unmotivated—the busier they get, the more active they… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share
We learn the most from fools ... yet we pay them back with the worst ingratitude. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share
We are victims of the post-Enlightenment view that the world functions like a sophisticated machine, to be understood like a textbook engineering problem and… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share
“loss of bone density and degradation of the health of the bones also causes aging, diabetes, and, for males, loss of fertility and sexual… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share
“It takes a huge investment in introspection to learn that the thirty or more hours spent “studying” the news last month neither had any… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share
