People are much less interested in what you are trying to show them than what you are trying to hide. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Charm is the ability to insult people without offending them; nerdiness the reverse — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
People employed in financial institutions are rarely interesting and even more rarely likable. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Capitalism is about adventurers who get harmed by their mistakes, not people who harm others with their mistakes. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
People focus on role models; it is more effective to find antimodels - people you don't want to resemble when you grow… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
The people I go after are the false experts, those who do not accept the limits of their knowledge. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Answer e-mails from junior people before more senior ones. Junior people have further to go and tend to remember who slighted them. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
People used to wear ordinary clothes weekdays, and formal attire on Sunday. Today it is the exact reverse. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
It's not a good idea to take a forecast from someone wearing a tie. If possible, tease people who take themselves and… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
I disagree with the followers of Marx and those of Adam Smith: the reason free markets work is because they allow people… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
In social policy, when we provide a safety net, it should be designed to help people take more entrepreneurial risks, not to… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
The worst side effect of wealth is the social associations it forces on its victims, as people with big houses end up… — 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
The number of managers with great track records in a given market depends far more on the number of people who started… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
When you ask people, 'What's the opposite of fragile?,' they tend to say robust, resilient, adaptable, solid, strong. That's not it. The… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
My major hobby is teasing people who take themselves and the quality of their knowledge too seriously and those who don't have… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Scientists don't know what they are talking about when they talk about religion. Religion has nothing to do with belief, and I… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
I suspect the I.Q., SAT, and school grades are tests designed by nerds so they can get high scores in order to… — 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
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
Failure saves lives. In the airline industry, every time a plane crashes the probability of the next crash is lowered by that.… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
A good rule of thumb is as follows: If the numbers come from somebody wearing a tie (Wall Street economist or analyst,… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
We should reward people, not ridicule them, for thinking the impossible. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
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
Half of the people lie with their lips; the other half with their tears — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
There are two types of people: those who try to win and those who try to win arguments. They are never the… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
People work out, they stress their body, and their body gets stronger from stress. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Most people are sceptical about the wrong things and gullible about the wrong things. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
What organized dating sites fail to understand is that the people are far more interesting in what they don't say about themselves. — 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
As countries get rich they start increasing education and the very educated people tend to not like trial and error, because they… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
I suppose that the main benefit of being rich (over just being independent) is to be able to despise rich people (a… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
The American people will eventually get hurt by this accumulated deficit. That's the problem. We have too much deficit. We have to… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
People who forecast simply because "that's my job," knowing pretty well that their forecast is ineffectual, are not what I would call… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
I'd rather have the market tell us what - I'd rather have events precipitate events, rather than just sit there like passive… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
The mortgage crisis is a clear instance of consumers who needed protection. There was predatory lending to people who didn't know what… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
For many people, commuting is the worst part of the day, and policies that can make commuting shorter and more convenient would… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
People have the problem of denial. This is one of the things I learned in Lebanon. Everybody who left Beirut when the… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
Older people are most beautiful when they have what is lacking in the young: poise, erudition, wisdom, phronesis, and this post-heroic absence… — 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
