Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Quotes about life

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst. Explore interesting quotes on life.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb: 392 quotes29 likes

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“You have a real life if and only if you do not compete with anyone in any of your pursuits.”

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

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 39

“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

“Half of life—the interesting half of life—we don't even have a name for.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012), p. 33

“If you want to get an idea of a friend's temperament, ethics, and personal elegance, you need to look at him under the tests of severe circumstances, not under the regular rosy glow of daily life. Can you assess the danger a criminal poses by examining only what he does on an ordinary day? Can we understand health without considering wild diseases and epidemics? Indeed the normal is often irrelevant.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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

“Economic life should be definancialised. We should learn not to use markets as storehouses of value: they do not harbour the certainties that normal citizens require. Citizens should experience anxiety about their own businesses (which they control), not their investments”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

which they do not control <br class="br"> Ten principles for a Black Swan-proof world http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5d5aa24e-23a4-11de-996a-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1, Financial Times, 2009-04-07. <br class="br">Ten principles for a Black Swan-proof world (2009)

“Asking science to explain life and vital matters is equivalent to asking a grammarian to explain poetry.”

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

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

“If your private life conflicts with your intellectual opinion, it cancels your intellectual ideas, not your private life.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Skin in the Game

Source: Skin in the Game (2018), p. 185