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.

Poverty is clearly one source of emotional suffering, but there are others, like loneliness.

To succeed in life requires a total inability to do anything that makes you uncomfortable when you look at yourself in the mirror.

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.

The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free

Banking is a very treacherous business because you don't realize it is risky until it is too late. It is like calm waters that deliver huge storms.

Deficits are like putting dynamite in the hands of children. They can get out of control very quickly.