For the classics philosophical insight was the product of a life of leisure; for me a life of leisure is the product… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Someone who says "I am busy" is either declaring incompetence (and lack of control of his life) or trying to get rid… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Asking science to explain life and vital matters is equivalent to asking a grammarian to explain poetry. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
This is the central illusion in life: that randomness is a risk, that it is a bad thing. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Life is a tightrope between two errors: generalizing the wrong particular and particularizing the wrong general. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“Living on our planet, today, requires a lot more imagination than we are made to have. We lack imagination and repress it… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
You have a real life if and only if you do not compete with anyone in any of your pursuits. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Never, never, never think - that's one lesson you should have in life. Never think that lack of variability is stability. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
In economic life and history more generally, just about everything of consequence comes from black swans; ordinary events have paltry effects in… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“It takes a huge investment in introspection to learn that the thirty or more hours spent “studying” the news last month neither… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Philosophers talk about truth and falsehood. People in life talk about payoff, exposure, and consequences (risks and rewards), hence fragility and antifragility.… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“Clearly, binary outcomes are not very prevalent in life; they mostly exist in laboratory experiments and in research papers. In life, payoffs… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“Yet simplicity has been difficult to implement in modern life because it is against the spirit of a certain brand of people… — 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… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Those who were unlucky in life in spite of their skills would eventually rise. The lucky fool might have benefited from some… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“good news is good news first; how good matters rather little. So to have a pleasant life you should spread these small… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“It happens that uncertainty, disorder, and the unknown are completely equivalent in their effect: antifragile systems benefit (to some degree) from, and… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“Since the Enlightenment, in the great tension between rationalism (how we would like things to be so they make sense to us)… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“The best way to verify that you are alive is by checking if you like variations. Remember that food would not have… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“Look into your own existence. Count the significant events, the technological changes,and the inventions that have taken place in our environment since… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“The Procrustean bed in life consists precisely in simplifying the non-linear and making it linear—the simplification that distorts.” — 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
To succeed in life requires a total inability to do anything that makes you uncomfortable when you look at yourself in the… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“Beware of precise plans by government. Let government predict: it makes them feel better about themselves and justifies their existence.” — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“(J)ust as we tend to underestimate the role of luck in life in general, we tend to overestimate it in games of… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Probability is not about the odds, but about the belief in the existence of an alternative outcome, cause, or motive. — 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
“Nero believes that risk-conscious hard work and discipline can lead someone to achieve a comfortable life with a very high probability. Beyond… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Economic life should be definancialised. We should learn not to use markets as storehouses of value: they do not harbour the certainties… — 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
“I propose that if you want a simple step to a higher form of life, as distant from the animal as you… — 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
