“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 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
“In a textbook case of naive empiricism, the author also looked for traits these millionaires had in common and figured out that… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“The situation is even more lopsided with book sales. If I told you that two authors sold a total of a million… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“A good book gets better at the second reading. A great book at the third. Any book not worth rereading isn't worth… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“Author discussed what he calls the "narrative fallacy." This refers to our "limited ability" to look at a sequence of facts "without… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“(respect for the weak being, after intellectual courage, the second most attractive quality to this author),” — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“be. So I follow the Lindy effect as a guide in selecting what to read: books that have been around for ten… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“The virtue of capitalism is that society can take advantage of people’s greed rather than their benevolence, but there is no need… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“. . . the world in which we live has an increasing number of feedback loops, causing events to be the cause… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Don't read newspapers for the news (just for the gossip and, of course, profiles of authors). The best filter to know if… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
The book is the only medium left that hasn't been corrupted by the profane. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
There is a certain category of fool-the overeducated, the academic, the journalist, the newspaper reader, the mechanistic scientist, the pseudo-empiricist, those endowed… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Umberto Eco is the owner of a large personal library of almost 30,000 books that he has not read. [To him] read… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
If you don't feel that you haven't read enough, you haven't read enough. — 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
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
Using, as an excuse, others' failure of common sense is in itself a failure of common sense. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
You know, children philosophize more than adults - and they are critical of adults. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
We learn the most from fools ... yet we pay them back with the worst ingratitude. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
