Remember that you are a Black Swan.

The central idea in The Black Swan is that: rare events cannot be estimated from empirical observation since they are rare.

People have the problem of denial. This is one of the things I learned in Lebanon. Everybody who left Beirut when the war started, including my parents, said, 'Oh, its temporary.' It lasted 17 years! People tend to underestimate the gravity of these situations. That's how they work.

They think that intelligence is about noticing things are relevant (detecting patterns); in a complex world, intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant (avoiding false patterns)

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

Anything that provides you with very, very stable income, very stable conditions, maybe generally stable, that often, it masks real risks, risks of blow-ups.

Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love.