Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes

When people call you intelligent it is almost always because they agree with you.

Finally, when young people who “want to help mankind” come to me asking, “What should I do? I want to reduce poverty, save the world,” and similar noble aspirations at the macro-level, my suggestion is: 1) Never engage in virtue signaling; 2) Never engage in rent-seeking; 3) You must start a business. Put yourself on the line, start a business. Yes, take risk, and if you get rich (which is optional), spend your money generously on others. We need people to take (bounded) risks. The entire idea is to move the descendants of Homo sapiens away from the macro, away from abstract universal aims, away from the kind of social engineering that brings tail risks to society. Doing business will always help (because it brings about economic activity without large-scale risky changes in the economy); institutions (like the aid industry) may help, but they are equally likely to harm (I am being optimistic; I am certain that except for a few most do end up harming). Courage (risk taking) is the highest virtue. We need entrepreneurs.

A complex system, contrary to what people believe, does not require complicated systems and regulations and intricate policies. The simpler, the better. Complications lead to multiplicative chains of unanticipated effects. Because of opacity, an intervention leads to unforeseen consequences, followed by apologies about the “unforeseen” aspect of the consequences, then to another intervention to correct the secondary effects, leading to an explosive series of branching “unforeseen” responses, each one worse than the preceding one. Yet simplicity has been difficult to implement in modern life because it is against the spirit of a certain brand of people who seek sophistication so they can justify their profession.

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

Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (one of the doer-Stoic authors), “fire feeds on obstacles.

Difficulty is what wakes up the genius.

I have the fondest memories of time spent in places called ugly, the most boring ones of places called scenic.

Lose your wallet full of credit cards and you will have a chance to have a great day.

Courage is the only virtue you cannot fake.

Categorizing is necessary for humans, but it becomes pathological when the category is seen as definitive, preventing people from considering the fuzziness of boundaries, let alone revising their categories.

"U wet who I want wetted/I wet who u want wetted/any nigga can get it(a favour for a favour)

Governments are wasting billions of dollars on attempting to predict events that are produced by interdependent systems and are therefore not statistically understandable at the individual level.

He defaults to thinking that what he doesn't see is not there, or what he does not understand does not exist. At the core, he tends to mistake the unknown for the nonexistent.

Success brings an asymmetry: you now have a lot more to lose than to gain. You are hence fragile.

It is good to not feel envy; but better to neither envy nor be envied.