Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Trending quotes (page 3)

“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 , Understanding

“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

Books , Reading

“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

Time

“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

Knowledge

“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

Imagination

“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

History

“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

Fools

“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

Problem

“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

Country

“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

Fate , Science

“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

World , Understanding

“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

Love

“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

Parent , Help , Hurt

“My best definition of a nerd: someone who asks you to explain an aphorism”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“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

People