Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes

A prophet is not someone who first had an idea. He is the one to first believe in it and take it to ...

A theory is like medicine (or government): often useless, sometimes necessary, always self-serving, ...

The problem is that our ideas are sticky: once we produce a theory, we are not likely to change our ...

Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do...

The next time you experience a blackout, take some solace by looking at the sky. You will not recogn...

Luck is the grand equalizer.

Why do we keep focusing on the minutiae, not the possible significant large events, in spite of the ...

I'm in favour of religion as a tamer of arrogance. For a Greek Orthodox, the idea of God as creator ...

The people I go after are the false experts, those who do not accept the limits of their knowledge.

I drive a hybrid, moving into an electric car. I only drink tap water, never consume food that's tra...

Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg didn't finish college. Too much emphasis is placed on for...

Every social association that is not face-to-face is injurious to your health

I select a very small number of things to be sceptical about, such as markets, and on these I am hyp...

The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.

If you hear a "prominent" economist using the word 'equilibrium,' or 'normal distribution,' do not a...

Someone with a low degree of epistemic arrogance is not too visible, like a shy person at a cocktail...

You cannot do anything with knowledge unless you know where it stops, and the costs of using it.

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

It took us a while to discover that we do effectively think, but that we more readily narrate backwa...

Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success othe...

It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the r...

When you beat up someone physically, you get excercise and stress relief; when you assault him verba...

The best way to measure the loss of intellectual sophistication - this "nerdification," to put it bl...

The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than b...

English does not distinguish between arrogant-up (irreverence toward the temporarily powerful) and a...

Reality is far more vicious than Russian roulette. First, it delivers the fatal bullet rather infreq...

If the past, by bringing surprises, did not resemble the past previous to it (what I call the past's...

There is a saying that bad traders divorce their spouse sooner than abandon their positions. Loyalty...

A central argument is never a summary. It is more like a generator.

Under opacity and in the newfound complexity of the world, people can hide risks and hurt others, wi...

Being self-owned is a state of mind.

Only he who is free with his time is free with his opinion.

The author cites researcher David Howard's idea of post-traumatic growth. Howard contends that some ...

We humans lack imagination, to the point of not even knowing what tomorrow's important things will l...

The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free

Life is about execution rather than purpose.

Know how to rank your beliefs not according to their plausibility but by the harm they may cause.

Just as no monkey is as good-looking as the ugliest of humans, no academic is worthier than the wors...

Suckers think that you cure greed with money, addiction with substances, expert problems with expert...

The next time someone pesters you with unneeded advice, gently remind him of the fate of the monk wh...

The rationalist imagines an imbecile-free society; the empiricist and imbecile-proof one, or even be...

In poor countries, officials receive explicit bribes; in D.C. they get the sophisticated, implicit, ...

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

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

They will envy you for your success, your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your st...

In the past, only some of the males, but all of the females, were able to procreate. Equality is mor...

We should ban banks from risk-taking because society is going to pay the price.

Globalization has created this interlocking fragility. At no time in the history of the universe has...

We know from chaos theory that even if you had a perfect model of the world, you'd need infinite pre...

What organized dating sites fail to understand is that the people are far more interesting in what t...

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

Love without sacrifice is like theft

. . . the world in which we live has an increasing number of feedback loops, causing events to be th...

Meditation is a way to be narcissistic without hurting anyone

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

Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love; close enough on the surface but, to the nonsu...

Wit seduces by signaling intelligence without nerdiness.

What I learned on my own I still remember

To bankrupt a fool, give him information.

The curious mind embraces science; the gifted and sensitive, the arts; the practical, business; the ...

Most info-Web-media-newspaper types have a hard time swallowing the idea that knowledge is reached (...

A mistake is not something to be determined after the fact, but in the light of the information unti...

Probability and expectation are not the same. Its probability and probability times the pay off.

Things always become obvious after the fact

The Internet allows the small guy a global marketplace. But technology is harmful in the sense that ...

Failure saves lives. In the airline industry, every time a plane crashes the probability of the next...

What America does best is produce the ability to accept failure.

Doctors most commonly get mixed up between absence of evidence and evidence of abense

All of technology, really, is about maximizing free options.