Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes

Formal education is credentials plus negative knowledge so it sort of works out on balance.

How much you truly “believe” in something can be manifested only through what you are willing to risk for it.

For I have a single definition of success: you look in the mirror every evening, and wonder if you disappoint the person you were at 18, right before the age when people start getting corrupted by life. Let him or her be the only judge; not your reputation, not your wealth, not your standing in the community, not the decorations on your lapel. If you do not feel ashamed, you are successful. All other definitions of success are modern constructions; fragile modern constructions.

Education & intellectualization make people think in Universal terms for local problems, with no awareness of Scalability.

"Fuck 'rap is real', watch the herbs stand still
never talkin' to snakes cause the words of man kill true in the game, as long as blood is blue in my veins

I can't talk on behalf of Nassim Taleb, as I am sharing his wisdom on the Twitter account. What I understand from him is that it doesn't matter whether the prediction is right or wrong if one doesn't have skin in the game. - Cetin, curator of @TalebWisdom account.

If the professor is not capable of giving a class without preparation, don’t attend. People should only teach what they have learned organically, through experience and curiosity…or get another job.

"I discovered that it is much more effective to act like a nice guy and be "reasonable" if you prove willing to go beyond just verbiage. You can afford to be compassionate, lax, and courteous if, once in a while, when it is least expected of you, but completely justified, you sue someone, or savage an enemy, just to show that you can walk the walk."

Wittgenstein's ruler: Unless you have confidence in the ruler's reliability, if you use a ruler to measure a table you may also be using the table to measure the ruler.

Social science means inventing a certain brand of human we can understand.

Complex systems are full of interdependencies—hard to detect—and nonlinear responses.

Never hire an A student unless it is to take exams.

People often need to suspend their self-promotion, and have someone in their lives they do not need to impress. This explains dog ownership.

When you say something you think are just saying something, but you are largely communicating why you had to say it.

Modernity’s double punishment is to make us both age prematurely and live longer.