When you write, you don't have the social constraints of having people in front of you, so you talk about abstract matters. — 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
What is nonmeasurable and nonpredictable will remain nonmeasurable and nonpredictable ... no matter how much hate mail I get. — 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 key to wealth is that it doesn't matter. Once you've had it, you don't think anything of it; you can wear… — 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
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
It does not matter how frequently something succeeds if failure is too costly to bear. — 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
