Maximum of an average is necessarily less volatile than the average maximum

Failure saves lives. In the airline industry, every time a plane crashes the probability of the next crash is lowered by that. The Titanic saved lives because we're building bigger and bigger ships. So these people died, but we have effectively improved the safety of the system, and nothing failed in vain.

Don't aim to be perfect! Aim to be antifragile

The person you are most afraid to contradict is yourself.

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."

Probability is not about the odds, but about the belief in the existence of an alternative outcome, cause, or motive.

Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur