Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I'm a private intellectual, not a public one.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

What I learned on my own I still remember

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“between one-third and one-half of all marriages fail,”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Abundance is harder for us to handle than scarcity.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Democracies can't handle austerity measures very well.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

To become a philosopher, start by walking very slowly.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Never take advice from someone wearing a tie.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I have never had personal debt and never will.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Don't look for the precise and local. Simply; do not be narrow minded.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Charm is the ability to insult people without offending them; nerdiness the reverse

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“(respect for the weak being, after intellectual courage, the second most attractive quality to this author),”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

A verbal threat is the most authentic certificate of impotence.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

You find peace by coming to terms with what you don't know.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Mathematics is not just a “numbers game,” it is a way of thinking.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

People employed in financial institutions are rarely interesting and even more rarely likable.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Light control works; close control leads to overreaction,”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Also, it's good to have more than one profession, in case your own profession goes out of style. A Wall Street trader…

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Never ask anyone for their opinion, forecast, or recommendation. Just ask them what they have—or don’t have—in their portfolio.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“innovation and sophistication spark from initial situations of necessity, in ways that go far beyond the satisfaction of such necessity”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Monsieur de Norpois is made to be ashamed of the fact that he expressed a different opinion. Proust did not consider that…

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“I am convinced that there exists a tradable security in the Western world that would be 100% correlated with the changes in…

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

A competitive athlete is painful to look at; trying hard to become an animal rather than a man, he will never be…

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

It is my great hope someday, to see science and decision makers rediscover what the ancients have always known. Namely that our…

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“The appearance of busyness reinforces the perception of causality, of the link between results, and one's role in them.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Work hard, not in grunt work, but in chasing such opportunities and maximizing exposure to them. This makes living in big cities…

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“He provides the example of a philosopher who puzzles about the reality of time, but who nonetheless applies for a research grant…

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Authors, artists, and even philosophers are much better off having a very small number of fanatics behind them than a large number…

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“social treadmill effect: You get rich, move to rich neighborhoods, then become poor again. To that add the psychological treadmill effect; you…

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“People with too much smoke and complicated tricks and methods in their brains start missing elementary, very elementary things. Persons in the…

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Capitalism is, among other things, the revitalization of the world thanks to the opportunity to be lucky. Luck is the grand equalizer,…

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Charlatan” was held to be a synonym for empirick. The word “empiric” designated someone who relied on experiment and experience to ascertain…

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

If you sat with a pencil and jotted down all the decisions you've taken in the past week, or, if you could,…

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Further, my characterization of a loser is someone who, after making a mistake, doesn’t introspect, doesn’t exploit it, feels embarrassed and defensive…

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“I use the example as computed by the mathematician Michael Berry. If you know a set of basic parameters concerning the ball…

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“On a folded piece of paper, in turn, each one of them would write a predetermined part of a sentence, not knowing…

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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

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

“The strategy for the discoverers and entrepreneurs is to rely less on top-down planning and focus on maximum tinkering and recognizing opportunities…

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“This book is the synthesis of, on one hand, the no-nonsense practitioner of uncertainty who spent his professional life trying to resist…

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“we are made to follow leaders who can gather people together because the advantages of being in groups trump the disadvantages of…

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb