Most so-called writers keep writing and writing with the hope, some day, to find something to say. - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The central idea in The Black Swan is that: rare events cannot be estimated from empirical observation since they are rare.

History is opaque. You see what comes out, not the script that produces events, the generator of history.

If you want to get an idea of a friend's temperament, ethics, and personal elegance, you need to look at him under the tests of severe circumstances, not under the regular rosy glow of daily life. Can you assess the danger a criminal poses by examining only what he does on an ordinary day? Can we understand health without considering wild diseases and epidemics? Indeed the normal is often irrelevant.