We should ban banks from risk-taking because society is going to pay the price.

This is the tragedy of modernity: as with neurotically overprotective parents, those trying to help are often hurting us the most.

The government-sponsored institution Fannie Mae, when I look at its risks, seems to be sitting on a barrel of dynamite, vulnerable to the slightest hiccup. But not to worry: their large staff of scientists deemed these events "unlikely."

When you ask people, 'What's the opposite of fragile?,' they tend to say robust, resilient, adaptable, solid, strong. That's not it. The opposite of fragile is something that gains from disorder.

I lift heavy weights and sprint, but I am so bad at it that I develop severe injuries.

The world we live in is vastly different from the world we think we live in.

Scepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be sceptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.