The payoff of a human venture is, in general, inversely proportional to what it is expected to be. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Randomness works well in search sometimes better than humans. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Social science means inventing a certain brand of human we can understand. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
We humans lack imagination, to the point of not even knowing what tomorrow's important things will look like. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Aesthetics, ethics, and many good things in humans are contagious. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Scepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be sceptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
We glorify those who left their names in history books at the expense of those contributors about whom our books are silent.… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
If something is going on, I hear about it. I like to talk to people, I socialise. Television is a waste of… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Scientists may be in the business of laughing at their predecessors, but owing to an array of human mental dispositions, few realize… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
I'm in favour of religion as a tamer of arrogance. For a Greek Orthodox, the idea of God as creator outside the… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Categorizing is necessary for humans, but it becomes pathological when the category is seen as definitive, preventing people from considering the fuzziness… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Much of the research into humans' risk-avoidance machinery shows that it is antiquated and unfit for the modern world; it is made… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“My point taken further is that True and False (hence what we call “belief”) play a poor, secondary role in human decisions;… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
They are born, put in a box; they go home to live in a box; they study by ticking boxes; they go… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
If there is something in nature you don't understand, odds are it makes sense in a deeper way that is beyond your… — 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
