Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes - Page 2

The only valid political system is one that can handle an imbecile in power without suffering from it

Your reputation is harmed the most by what you say to defend it.

You will be civilized on the day you can spend a long period doing nothing, learning nothing, and improving nothing, without feeling the slightest amount of guilt.

People are much less interested in what you are trying to show them than what you are trying to hide.

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

Don't cross a river if it is four feet deep on average.

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

An idea starts to be interesting when you get scared of taking it to its logical conclusion.

Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost.

An elephant is vastly more efficient, metabolically, than a mouse. It's the same for a megacity as opposed to a village. But an elephant can break a leg very easily, whereas you can toss a mouse out of a window and it'll be fine. Size makes you fragile.

They think that intelligence is about noticing things are relevant (detecting patterns); in a complex world, intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant (avoiding false patterns)

There are systems that use failure as fuel for improvement, where the cost of failure is small.

A Stoic is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.

The weak shows his strength and hides his weaknesses; the magnificent exhibits his weaknesses like ornaments.

You will get the most attention from those who hate you. No friend, no admirer and no partner will flatter you with as much curiosity.

Restaurants get you in with food to sell you liquor; religions get you in with belief to sell you rules.

You need a story to displace a story.

They will envy you for your success, your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status - but rarely for your wisdom.

Avoid losers. If you hear someone use the words 'impossible', 'never', 'too difficult' too often, drop him or her from your social network.

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

For the robust, an error is information.

Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking.

If you roll dice, you know that the odds are one in six that the dice will come up on a particular side. So you can calculate the risk. But, in the stock market, such computations are bull - you don't even know how many sides the dice have!

The inability to predict outliers implies the inability to predict the course of history

If you have more than one reason to do something (choose a doctor or veterinarian, hire a gardener or an employee, marry a person, go on a trip), just don’t do it. It does not mean that one reason is better than two, just that by invoking more than one reason you are trying to convince yourself to do something. Obvious decisions (robust to error) require no more than a single reason.