People are brainwashed to not realize that so many "noble" pursuits (academia, service, anything where one is paid with "honors") are zero-sum. And … - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

This book is the synthesis of, on one hand, the no-nonsense practitioner of uncertainty who spent his professional life trying to resist being fooled by randomness and trick the emotions associated with probabilistic outcomes and, on the other, the aesthetically obsessed, literature-loving human being willing to be fooled by any form of nonsense that is polished, refined, original, and tasteful. I am not capable of avoiding being the fool of randomness; what I can do is confine it to where it brings some aesthetic gratification.

There is no more unmistakable sign of failure than that of a middle-aged man boasting of his successes in college.

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