What we need to do is break the financial community's grip on society.

We should probably stop trading derivatives, anything more complex than regular options ... I am an options trader, and I don't understand options. How do you want a regulator to understand them?

Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.

Financial institutions have been merging into a smaller number of very large banks. Almost all banks are interrelated. So the financial ecology is swelling into gigantic, incestuous, bureaucratic banks-when one fails, they all fall. We have moved from a diversified ecology of small banks, with varied lending policies, to a more homogeneous framework of firms that all resemble one another. True, we now have fewer failures, but when they occur... I shiver at the thought.

Never ask anyone for their opinion, forecast, or recommendation. Just ask them what they have—or don’t have—in their portfolio.

When you write, you don't have the social constraints of having people in front of you, so you talk about abstract matters.

If my detractors knew me better they would hate me even more.