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
“what I was given to study in school I have forgotten; what I decided to read on my own, I still remember.” — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
I hated school because I liked to daydream and the system tried to stop me from that. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
If you are an Arabic-speaking, Greek-Orthodox going to a French school it makes you deeply sceptical if you have to listen to… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
“Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love; close enough on the surface but, to the nonsucker, not exactly the same… — Nassim Nicholas Taleb Copy Share Image
You want to be yourself, idiosyncratic; the collective (school, rules, jobs, technology) wants you generic to the point of castration. — 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
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
