The curious mind embraces science; the gifted and sensitive, the arts; the practical, business; the leftover becomes an economist

We glorify those who left their names in history books at the expense of those contributors about whom our books are silent. We humans are not just a superficial race - we are a very unfair one.

Work hard, not in grunt work, but in chasing such opportunities and maximizing exposure to them. This makes living in big cities invaluable because you increase the odds of serendipitous encounters-you gain exposure to the envelope of serendipity.

When you develop your opinions on the basis of weak evidence, you will have difficulty interpreting subsequent information that contradicts these opinions, even if this new information is obviously more accurate.

I'd rather have the market tell us what - I'd rather have events precipitate events, rather than just sit there like passive people in Washington.

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!

Few understand that procrastination is our natural defense, letting things take care of themselves and exercise their antifragility; it results from some ecological or naturalistic wisdom, and is not always bad - at an existential level, it is my body rebelling against its entrapment. It is my soul fighting the Procrustean bed of modernity.