Weak men act to satisfy their needs, stronger men their duties.

Luck is the grand equalizer.

Philosophers talk about truth and falsehood. People in life talk about payoff, exposure, and consequences (risks and rewards), hence fragility and antifragility. And sometimes philosophers and thinkers and those who study conflate Truth with risks and rewards.

What America does best is produce the ability to accept failure.

Restaurants get you in with food to sell you liquor; religions get you in with belief to sell you rules.

Experience is devoid of the cherry-picking that we find in studies.

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.