Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes
It's not a good idea to take a forecast from someone wearing a tie. If possible, tease people who take themselves and their knowledge too seriously.
The track record of economists in predicting events is monstrously bad. It is beyond simplification; it is like medieval medicine.
Any system that is deprived of its natural volatility, with government up (unintelligible) volatile, any system becomes very fragile.
Success is becoming in middle adulthood what you dreamed to be in late childhood.
I want them poor and they deserve to be poor. You can't have capitalism without punishment.
In the United States large corporations control some members of Congress. All this does is delay the corporation’s funeral at our expense.
The bonus for bankers fragilizes the system. Someone has the upside at the expense of others.
It is often the mistakes of others that benefit the rest of us and, sadly, not them ... For the antifragile, harm from errors should be less than the benefits.
It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one.
If you are in banking and lending, surprise outcomes are likely to be negative for you.
Deficits are like putting dynamite in the hands of children. They can get out of control very quickly.
It was obvious that their profits were simply cash borrowed from destiny with some random payback time.
Probability and expectation are not the same. Its probability and probability times the pay off.
In science you need to understand the world; in business you need others to misunderstand it.
The difference between slaves in Roman and Ottoman days and today's employees is that slaves did not need to flatter their boss.
Never ask anyone for their opinion, forecast, or recommendation. Just ask them what they have—or don’t have—in their portfolio.
Most so-called writers keep writing and writing with the hope, some day, to find something to say.
Few understand that procrastination is our natural defense, letting things take care of themselves and exercise their antifragility.
Private equity has absolutely no reason to exist. The private equity holder has all the upside and the banks all the downside.
Character is proportionate to N, the number of consecutive failures without being discouraged, or equivalently, the number of successive rejections without being intimidated.
As countries get rich they start increasing education and the very educated people tend to not like trial and error, because they think they're obligated to use the body of knowledge they have.
I am happy everywhere except in places where I see glitz and rich farts. I am happiest in Brooklyn, where the concentration of rich farts is minimal.
Janet Yellen at the FED is equivalent to having a biology schoolteacher who has never seen blood perform brain surgery.
It is much harder to become independent if you are wealthy than to become wealthy if you are independent.
Anything organic requires some dose of variability so it can adapt all the time, and fixing things is not a good idea.
A prophet is not someone with special visions, just someone blind to most of what others see
Banks have never made money in the history of banking, losing the equivalent of all their past profits periodically - while bankers strike it rich.
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.
A good maxim allows you to have the last word without even starting a conversation.
Education makes the wise slightly wiser, but it makes the fool vastly more dangerous.
I drive a hybrid, moving into an electric car. I only drink tap water, never consume food that's travelled.
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.
