Top 15 Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes

If you feel that you are in competition with anyone, for anything, you are a loser.

The best test of intellectual breadth & acumen: avoidance of nitpicking.

There is a historical constant: no amount of wealth can liberate a third-rate thinker from intellectual envy or from the deeply degrading sense of scholarly inferiority -- that feeling of impoverished erudition.
No amount of wealth.

Never compromise. If assholes don't find me an asshole, I am doing something wrong.

A man without a heroic bent starts dying at the age of thirty.

It is a very powerful manipulation to let others win the small battles.

To be a real Human, one needs intelligence, courage, tenacity, curiosity, and a strong sense of justice. Remove any one of the five and you end up with the equivalent of a lemon. Remove the sense of justice and you end up with a monster.

Someone who says “I am busy” is either declaring incompetence (and lack of control of his life) or trying to get rid of you.

Never take investment advice from someone who has to work for a living.

It takes 1-5 years to go from couch potato to physically fit. It takes 40-75 years to go from ignorant to erudite.

My grandfather, a politician, never failed an election. He had a way of talking to pple as if they had been friends for a long time.
I learned from him to do that systematically, particularly w/disfavored communities.
But I've never repressed my urge to irritate arrogant fucks.

Life is about execution rather than purpose.

Intellect without balls is like a racecar without tires.

Intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant.

The best philosophers were not academics, but had another job, so their philosophy was not corrupted by careerism.