Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes

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

The test of originality for an idea is not the absence of one single predecessor but the presence of multiple but incompatible ones.

Anyone who likes meetings should be banned from attending meetings.

Do not read books on time management/MBAbullshit 2) Do nothing that bores you & stop before something gets dull.

Michelangelo was asked by the pope about the secret of his genius, particularly how he carved the statue of David, largely considered the masterpiece of all masterpieces. His answer was: “It’s simple. I just remove everything that is not David.

A government run by professionals is like a form or a trading house run by back office &support people. But firms go bust, govs expand.

Only in recent history has "working hard" signaled pride rather than shame for lack of talent, finesse, and, mostly, sprezzatura.

Almost all those caught making a logical fallacy interpret it as a "disagreement".

Medicine is for the very ill, never the healthy. In, there is the assertion that there has been practically NOTHING made by humans to "improve" on nature or help with shortcuts that did not end up harming with UNSEEN side effects.

You can easily tell a Northener: he/she feels guilty doing nothing. Even doing nothing for them is programmed, labeled, and has to be learned using some Yoga instructor.

Those who believe in the unconditional benefits of past experience should consider this pearl of wisdom allegedly voiced by a famous ship’s captain: But in all my experience, I have never been in any accident… of any sort worth speaking about. I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea. I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort. E. J. Smith, 1907, Captain, RMS Titanic Captain Smith’s ship sank in 1912 in what became the most talked-about shipwreck in history.*

It is as if the mission of modernity was to squeeze every drop of variability and randomness out of life with the ironic result of making the world a lot more unpredictable, as if the goddesses of chance wanted to have the last word.

Preoccupation with efficacy is the main obstacle to a poetic, elegant, robust and heroic life.

There are designations, like “economist,” “prostitute,” or “consultant,” for which additional characterization doesn’t add information.

In other words, history teaches us to avoid the brand of naive empiricism that consists of learning from casual historical facts.