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Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, and former option trader and risk analyst, whose work concerns problems of randomness, probability, and uncertainty. His 2007 book The Black Swan has been described by The Sunday Times as one of the twelve most influential books since World War II.Taleb is the author of the Incerto, a five volume philosophical essay on uncertainty published between 2001 and 2018 . He has been a professor at several universities, serving as a Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering since September 2008. He has been co-editor-in-chief of the academic journal Risk and Decision Analysis since September 2014. He has also been a practitioner of mathematical finance, a hedge fund manager, and a derivatives trader, and is currently listed as a scientific adviser at Universa Investments.He criticized the risk management methods used by the finance industry and warned about financial crises, subsequently profiting from the late-2000s financial crisis. He advocates what he calls a "black swan robust" society, meaning a society that can withstand difficult-to-predict events. He proposes antifragility in systems, that is, an ability to benefit and grow from a certain class of random events, errors, and volatility as well as "convex tinkering" as a method of scientific discovery, by which he means that decentralized experimentation outperforms directed research. Wikipedia  

✵ 11. September 1960  •  Other names نسیم نقولا طالب, 나심 니컬러스 탈레브
Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo

Works

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
Fooled by Randomness
Fooled by Randomness
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Nassim Nicholas Taleb: 196 quotes29 likes

Famous Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes

“My idea of the modern Stoic sage is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012), p. 156

“What I learned on my own I still remember”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“They will envy you for your success, your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status - but rarely for your wisdom.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“You may never know what type of person someone is unless they are given opportunities to violate moral or ethical codes.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

“Remember that you are a Black Swan.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes about people

“Half of the people lie with their lips; the other half with their tears”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“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 book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“People focus on role models; it is more effective to find antimodels - people you don't want to resemble when you grow up”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Charm is the ability to insult people without offending them; nerdiness the reverse.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 30

“Categorizing is necessary for humans, but it becomes pathological when the category is seen as definitive, preventing people from considering the fuzziness of boundaries, let alone revising their categories.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007), p.15

“I suppose that the main benefit of being rich (over just being independent) is to be able to despise rich people (a good concentration of whom you find in glitzy ski resorts) without any sour grapes. It is even sweeter when these farts don't know that you are richer than they are.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012), p. 176 (footnote)

Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes about life

“Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 27

“Preoccupation with efficacy is the main obstacle to a poetic, elegant, robust and heroic life.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 29

“Decomposition, for most, starts when they leave the free, social, and uncorrupted college life for the solitary confinement of professions and nuclear families.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 41

“Someone who says “I am busy” is either declaring incompetence (and lack of control of his life) or trying to get rid of you.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 26

“Much of modern life is preventable chronic stress injury.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012), p. 64

“For the classics philosophical insight was the product of a life of leisure; for me a life of leisure is the product of philosophical insight.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 84

Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Trending quotes

“Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Source: Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

“The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“Karl Marx, a visionary, figured out that you can control a slave much better by convincing him he is an employee.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes

“Things always become obvious after the fact”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“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 book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 26

“My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 4

“Lucky fools do not bear the slightest suspicion that they may be lucky fools - by definition, they do not know that they belong to such a category.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Fooled by Randomness

Fooled by Randomness (2001)

“We favor the visible, the embedded, the personal, the narrated, and the tangible; we scorn the abstract.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Fooled by Randomness

Fooled by Randomness (2001)

“This is the central illusion in life: that randomness is a risk, that it is a bad thing …”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012), p. 84

“Love without sacrifice is like theft”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“When you develop your opinions on the basis of weak evidence, you will have difficulty interpreting subsequent information that contradicts these opinions, even if this new information is obviously more accurate.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“The psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer has a simple heuristic. Never ask the doctor what you should do. Ask him what he would do if he were in your place. You would be surprised at the difference”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

“If you want to annoy a poet, explain his poetry.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“Wit seduces by signaling intelligence without nerdiness.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 60

“The best way to measure the loss of intellectual sophistication - this "nerdification," to put it bluntly - is in the growing disappearance of sarcasm, as mechanic minds take insults a bit too literally.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“The irony of the process of thought control: the more energy you put into trying to control your ideas and what you think about, the more your ideas end up controlling you.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

“A prophet is not someone with special visions, just someone blind to most of what others see”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“They think that intelligence is about noticing things are relevant (detecting patterns); in a complex world, intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant (avoiding false patterns)”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“It is my great hope someday, to see science and decision makers rediscover what the ancients have always known. Namely that our highest currency is respect.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“When you beat up someone physically, you get excercise and stress relief; when you assault him verbally on the Internet, you just harm yourself.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“If you hear a "prominent" economist using the word 'equilibrium,' or 'normal distribution,' do not argue with him; just ignore him, or try to put a rat down his shirt.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“Meditation is a way to be narcissistic without hurting anyone”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

“The curious mind embraces science; the gifted and sensitive, the arts; the practical, business; the leftover becomes an economist”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“We tend to use knowledge as therapy.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007), p. 69

“Suckers try to win arguments, nonsuckers try to win.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

“Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market alow you to put there.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“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 are at other tasks.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

“He who has never sinned is less reliable than he who has only sinned once.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012)

“Probability is not a mere computation of odds on the dice or more complicated variants; it is the acceptance of the lack of certainty in our knowledge and the development of methods for dealing with our ignorance.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Source: Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

“Modernity has replaced ethics with legalese.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012), p. 15

“true humility is when you can surprise yourself more than others; the rest is either shyness or good marketing”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“The imagination of the genius vastly surpasses his intellect; the intellect of the academic vastly surpasses his imagination”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“The inability to predict outliers implies the inability to predict the course of history”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“To bankrupt a fool, give him information.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“By all means, avoid words—threats, complaints, justification, narratives, reframing, attempts to win arguments, supplications; avoid words!”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“The problem with experts is that they do not know what they do not know”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“In poor countries, officials receive explicit bribes; in D. C. they get the sophisticated, implicit, unspoken promise to work for large corporations”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“I will repeat the following until I am hoarse: it is contagion that determines the fate of a theory in social science, not its validity.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“I want to live happily in a world I don't understand.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012), p. 4
Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

“The simpler, the better. Complications lead to multiplicative chains of unanticipated effects.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

“Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

“This is the tragedy of modernity: as with neurotically overprotective parents, those trying to help are often hurting us the most.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

“But it remains the case that you know what is wrong with a lot more confidence than you know what is right.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007), p.58

“It is remarkable how fast and how effectively you can construct a nationality with a flag, a few speeches, and a national anthem; to this day I avoid the label "Lebanese," preferring the less restrictive "Levantine" designation.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007), p. 5

“You exist if and only if you are free to do things without a visible objective, with no justification and, above all, outside the dictatorship of someone else’s narrative.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 17

“Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 30

“There is a certain category of fool—the overeducated, the academic, the journalist, the newspaper reader, the mechanistic "scientist", the pseudo-empiricist, those endowed with what I call "epistemic arrogance", this wonderful ability to discount what they did not see, the unobserved.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 106

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