Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes

it is impossible for our brain to see anything in raw form without some interpretation. We may not even always be conscious of it.

Never read a book review written by an author whose books you wouldn't read.

Debating someone on social media is equivalent to looking for love in a bordello.

You want your enemies to complain about you. The more they complain, the better.

We are hunters; we are only truly alive in those moments when we improvise; no schedule, just small surprises and stimuli from the environment.

They will envy you for your success, for your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status — but rarely for your wisdom.

The characteristic feature of the loser is to bemoan, in general terms, mankind’s flaws, biases, contradictions, and irrationality — without exploiting them for fun and profit.

The fool generalizes the particular; the nerd particularizes the general; ... the wise does neither.

Figured out why 99% of academics have to be misfit, 3rd rate intellectually, by construction. You observe, say in probabilistic matters, yuuge inconsistencies. When you point it out to them, they require a "reference". OK: write the fucking "reference".

If you have earned your self-respect, respect by others is a luxury; if you haven't, respect by others is a necessity.

The stock market, in brief: participants are calmly waiting in line to be slaughtered while thinking it is for a Broadway show.

I have organized my career and business in such a way as to... benefit... I am profiting from the rare event, with asymmetric bets.

The appearance of busyness reinforces the perception of causality, of the link between results, and one's role in them.

A lesson I learned from this ancient culture is the notion of megalopsychon (a term expressed in Aristotle’s ethics), a sense of grandeur that was superseded by the Christian value of “humility.” There is no word for it in Romance languages; in Arabic it is called Shhm — best translated as nonsmall. If you take risks and face your fate with dignity, there is nothing you can do that makes you small; if you don’t take risks, there is nothing you can do that makes you grand, nothing.

Not seeing a tsunami or an economic event coming is excusable; building something fragile to them is not.