If you sat with a pencil and jotted down all the decisions you've taken in the past week, or, if you could, over your lifetime, you would realize that almost all of them have had asymmetric payoff, with one side carrying a larger consequence than the other. You decide principally based on fragility, not probability. Or to rephrase, You decide principally based on fragility, not so much on True/False.

Scientists don't know what they are talking about when they talk about religion. Religion has nothing to do with belief, and I don't believe it has any negative impact on people's lives outside of intolerance. Why do I go to church? It's like asking, why did you marry that woman? You make up reasons, but it's probably just smell. I love the smell of candles. It's an aesthetic thing.

In economic life and history more generally, just about everything of consequence comes from black swans; ordinary events have paltry effects in the long term.

Janet Yellen at the FED is equivalent to having a biology schoolteacher who has never seen blood perform brain surgery.

Alan Greenspan is unskilled; you don't take the unskilled seriously.

There are systems that use failure as fuel for improvement, where the cost of failure is small.

The grandchildren should not bear the debts of the grandparents.