You don't become completely free by just avoiding being a slave; you also need to avoid becoming a master. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Hard work will get you a professorship or a BMW. You need both work and luck for a Booker, a Nobel or… — 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
The difference between slaves in Roman and Ottoman days and today's employees is that slaves did not need to flatter their boss. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Weak men act to satisfy their needs, stronger men their duties. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
We have this culture of financialization. People think they need to make money with their savings rather with their own business. So… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Comfort makes you weaker. We need some variability, some stressors. Not too much, but just enough. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
A washing machine needs constant maintenance. It doesn't want any harm. It wants tranquility, and you need someone to - you're not… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
What we need to do is break the financial community's grip on society. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Don't ask the barber whether you need a haircut, and don't ask an academic if what he does is relevant. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
We know from chaos theory that even if you had a perfect model of the world, you'd need infinite precision in order… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
In science you need to understand the world; in business you need others to misunderstand it. — 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
