My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Modernity needs to understand that being rich and becoming rich are not mathematically, personally, socially, and ethically the same thing. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
This is the tragedy of modernity: as with neurotically overprotective parents, those trying to help are often hurting us the most. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Modernity widened the distance between the sensational and the relevant. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“The four most influential moderns: Darwin, Marx, Freud, and (the productive) Einstein were scholars but not academics. It has always been hard… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“It is as if the mission of modernity was to squeeze every drop of variability and randomness out of life— with the… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Another definition of modernity: conversations can be more and more completely reconstructed with clips from other conversations taking place at the same… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“I attended a symposium, an event named after a fifth century (B.C.) Athenian drinking party in which nonnerds talked about love; alas,… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“...my classical values make me advocate the triplet of erudition, elegance, and courage; against modernity's phoniness, nerdiness, and philistinism...many philistines reduce my… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
I have respect for mother nature's methods of robustness (billions of years allow most of what is fragile to break); classical thought… — 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
