70 Quotes & Sayings By Nassim Nicholas Taleb

 Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a Lebanese-American author, polymath, and statistician. He is the author of the bestselling book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder in a series of books. His most recent book is The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable . Taleb has been named in the top 100 thinkers of our time by Prospect Magazine, one of the top 100 intellectuals in the world by Foreign Policy Magazine, and one of the World's Top 100 Intellectuals by Foreign Policy Read more

Things always become obvious after the fact
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Things always become obvious after the fact Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Reality is far more vicious than Russian roulette. First, it delivers the fatal bullet rather infrequently, like a revolver that would have hundreds, even thousands of chambers instead of six. After a few dozen tries, one forgets about the existence of a bullet, under a numbing false sense of security. Second, unlike a well-defined precise game like Russian roulette, where the risks are visible to anyone capable of multiplying and dividing by six, one does not observe the barrel of reality. One is capable of unwittingly playing Russian roulette - and calling it by some alternative “low risk” game. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Wit seduces by signaling intelligence without nerdiness.
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Wit seduces by signaling intelligence without nerdiness. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
A prophet is not someone with special visions, just someone...
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A prophet is not someone with special visions, just someone blind to most of what others see Nassim Nicholas Taleb
You cannot do anything with knowledge unless you know where...
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You cannot do anything with knowledge unless you know where it stops, and the costs of using it. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Missing a train is only painful if you run after...
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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
The curious mind embraces science; the gifted and sensitive, the...
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The curious mind embraces science; the gifted and sensitive, the arts; the practical, business; the leftover becomes an economist Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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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
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A prophet is not someone who first had an idea. He is the one to first believe in it and take it to its conclusion. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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There is a saying that bad traders divorce their spouse sooner than abandon their positions. Loyalty to ideas is not a good thing for traders, scientists - or anyone. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Meditation is a way to be narcissistic without hurting anyone Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Just as no monkey is as good-looking as the ugliest of humans, no academic is worthier than the worst of the creators Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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If the past, by bringing surprises, did not resemble the past previous to it (what I call the past's past), then why should our future resemble our current past? Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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What I learned on my own I still remember Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Life is about execution rather than purpose. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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In the past, only some of the males, but all of the females, were able to procreate. Equality is more natural for females. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Someone with a low degree of epistemic arrogance is not too visible, like a shy person at a cocktail party. We are not predisposed to respect humble people, those who try to suspend judgement. Now contemplate epistemic humility. Think of someone heavily introspective, tortured by the awareness of his own ignorance. He lacks the courage of the idiot, yet has the rare guts to say "I don't know." He does not mind looking like a fool or, worse, an ignoramus. He hesitates, he will not commit, and he agonizes over the consequences of being wrong. He introspects, introspects, and introspects until he reaches physical and nervous exhaustion. This does not necessarily mean he lacks confidence, only that he holds his own knowledge to be suspect. I will call such a person an epistemocrat; the province where the laws are structured with this kind of human fallibility in mind I will can an epistemocracy. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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The next time someone pesters you with unneeded advice, gently remind him of the fate of the monk whom Ivan the Terrible put to death for delivering uninvited (and moralizing) advice. It works as a short-term cure. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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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
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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
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It took us a while to discover that we do effectively think, but that we more readily narrate backward in order to give ourselves the illusion of understanding, and give a cover to our past actions. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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A theory is like medicine (or government): often useless, sometimes necessary, always self-serving, and on occasion lethal. So it needs to be used with care, moderation and close adult supervision. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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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
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The rationalist imagines an imbecile-free society; the empiricist and imbecile-proof one, or even better, a rationalist-proof one. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Why do we keep focusing on the minutiae, not the possible significant large events, in spite of the obvious evidence of their huge influence? Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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English does not distinguish between arrogant-up (irreverence toward the temporarily powerful) and arrogant-down (directed at the small guy). Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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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
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Every social association that is not face-to-face is injurious to your health Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Love without sacrifice is like theft Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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A mistake is not something to be determined after the fact, but in the light of the information until that point Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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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
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The problem is that our ideas are sticky: once we produce a theory, we are not likely to change our minds.... Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Under opacity and in the newfound complexity of the world, people can hide risks and hurt others, with the law incapable of catching them. Iatrogenics has both delayed and invisible consequences. It is hard to see causal links, to fully understand what’s going on. Under such epistemic limitations, skin in the game is the only true mitigator of fragility. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Being self-owned is a state of mind. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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The author cites researcher David Howard's idea of post-traumatic growth. Howard contends that some individuals faced with a traumatic event actually develop new strength. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love; close enough on the surface but, to the nonsucker, not exactly the same thing Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one. Those who have followed the assertive idiot rather than the introspective wise person have passed us some of their genes. This is apparent from a social pathology: psychopaths rally followers. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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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
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Suckers think that you cure greed with money, addiction with substances, expert problems with experts, banking with bankers, economics with economists, and debt crises with debt spending Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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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
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A central argument is never a summary. It is more like a generator. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Only he who is free with his time is free with his opinion. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Know how to rank your beliefs not according to their plausibility but by the harm they may cause. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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If you want to annoy a poet, explain his poetry. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Most info- Web-media-newspaper types have a hard time swallowing the idea that knowledge is reached (mostly) by removing junk from peoples heads Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Doctors most commonly get mixed up between absence of evidence and evidence of abense Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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.. . the world in which we live has an increasing number of feedback loops, causing events to be the cause of more events (say, people buy a book because other people bought it), thus generating snowballs and arbitrary and unpredictable planet-wide winner-take-all effects. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Luck is the grand equalizer. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Probability and expectation are not the same. Its probability and probability times the pay off. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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To bankrupt a fool, give him information. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Failure saves lives. In the airline industry, every time a plane crashes the probability of the next crash is lowered by that. The Titanic saved lives because we're building bigger and bigger ships. So these people died, but we have effectively improved the safety of the system, and nothing failed in vain. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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What America does best is produce the ability to accept failure. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Globalization has created this interlocking fragility. At no time in the history of the universe has the cancellation of a Christmas order in New York meant layoffs in China. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg didn't finish college. Too much emphasis is placed on formal education - I told my children not to worry about their grades but to enjoy learning. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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I drive a hybrid, moving into an electric car. I only drink tap water, never consume food that's travelled. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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I'm in favour of religion as a tamer of arrogance. For a Greek Orthodox, the idea of God as creator outside the human is not God in God's terms. My God isn't the God of George Bush. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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I select a very small number of things to be sceptical about, such as markets, and on these I am hypersceptic. But I want to be fooled by randomness in art. I want the ceremonial of religion; we are made for it. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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The people I go after are the false experts, those who do not accept the limits of their knowledge. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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The next time you experience a blackout, take some solace by looking at the sky. You will not recognize it. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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We humans lack imagination, to the point of not even knowing what tomorrow's important things will look like. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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All of technology, really, is about maximizing free options. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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The Internet allows the small guy a global marketplace. But technology is harmful in the sense that we get too much information from it. Because of the web we get 10 times the amount of noise we ever got, which makes harmful fallacies far more likely. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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We should ban banks from risk-taking because society is going to pay the price. Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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We know from chaos theory that even if you had a perfect model of the world, you'd need infinite precision in order to predict future events. With sociopolitical or economic phenomena, we don't have anything like that. Nassim Nicholas Taleb