Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes

Being an economist is the least ethical profession, closer to charlatanism than any science.

There is a certain category of fool-the overeducated, the academic, the journalist, the newspaper reader, the mechanistic scientist, the pseudo-empiricist, those endowed with what I call epistemic arrogance, this wonderful ability to discount what they did not see, the unobserved.

What I learned on my own I still remember

Paul Krugman is a danger to society!

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

We know from chaos theory that even if you had a perfect model of the world, you'd need infinite precision in order to predict future events. With sociopolitical or economic phenomena, we don't have anything like that.

When I trade, I don't have an agency problem; I have my neck on the line. When a bank or banker trades, it's not his neck on the line.

The curious mind embraces science; the gifted and sensitive, the arts; the practical, business; the leftover becomes an economist

Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love; close enough on the surface but, to the non-sucker, not exactly the same thing.

To become a philosopher, start by walking very slowly.

They will envy you for your success, your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status - but rarely for your wisdom.

Redundancy is ambiguous because it seems like a waste if nothing unusual happens. Except that something unusual happens-usually .

I've debated many economists who claim to specialize in risk and probability: when one takes them slightly outside their narrow focus, but within the discipline of probability, they fall apart, with the disconsolate face of a gym rat in front of a gangster hit man.

If you hear a "prominent" economist using the word 'equilibrium,' or 'normal distribution,' do not argue with him; just ignore him, or try to put a rat down his shirt.

Make sure that you are in a situation where the constant mistakes are small and can be used for something.

If you have more than one reason to do something (choose a doctor or veterinarian, hire a gardener or an employee, marry a person, go on a trip), just don’t do it. It does not mean that one reason is better than two, just that by invoking more than one reason you are trying to convince yourself to do something. Obvious decisions (robust to error) require no more than a single reason.

You exist if and only if you are free to do things without a visible objective, with no justification and, above all, outside the dictatorship of someone else's narrative.

People work out, they stress their body, and their body gets stronger from stress.

I lift heavy weights and sprint, but I am so bad at it that I develop severe injuries.

Information is bad for knowledge.

Don't disturb complicated systems that have been around for a very long time. We don't understand their logic. Don't pollute the planet. Leave it the way we found it, regardless of scientific 'evidence'.

It's not a good idea to take a forecast from someone wearing a tie. If possible, tease people who take themselves and their knowledge too seriously.

You want failures to be small and informational. Silicon Valley does very well. It knows how to use failure as a tool for improvement.

Probability is not a mere computation of odds on the dice or more complicated variants; it is the acceptance of the lack of certainty in our knowledge and the development of methods for dealing with our ignorance.

It was obvious that their profits were simply cash borrowed from destiny with some random payback time.

Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking.

Suckers try to win arguments, nonsuckers try to win.

We tend to use knowledge as therapy.

If one puts an infinite number of monkeys in front of typewriters, and lets them clap away, there is a certainty that one of them will come out with an exact version of the 'Iliad.'

The bonus for bankers fragilizes the system. Someone has the upside at the expense of others.

If I ask you to write down the last 4 digits of your social security number, and then take you out to lunch and ask you how many dentists there are in Manhattan, there's going to be a high correlation between those two numbers. What happens is that the number psychologically makes you feel confident.

Charm is the ability to insult people without offending them; nerdiness the reverse

Nobody reads the disclosures that roll down your computer screen. You click 'I agree' but you don't know what you're agreeing to.

Learn to fail with pride - and do so fast and cleanly. Maximise trial and error - by mastering the error part.

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

My nightmare scenario is that the government saves Citibank once again, as well as the other banks, and business resumes as usual. Then, the next time the system breaks, it breaks much, much bigger.

The imagination of the genius vastly surpasses his intellect; the intellect of the academic vastly surpasses his imagination

Love without sacrifice is like theft

Never take advice from anyone in a tie. They'll bankrupt you. Don't ask a general for advice on war, and don't ask a broker for advice on money.

Writing is the art of repeating oneself without anyone noticing.

The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds

A Stoic is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.

When you develop your opinions on the basis of weak evidence, you will have difficulty interpreting subsequent information that contradicts these opinions, even if this new information is obviously more accurate.

The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.

Ideas come and go, stories stay.

In the United States large corporations control some members of Congress. All this does is delay the corporation’s funeral at our expense.

My major hobby is teasing people who take themselves and the quality of their knowledge too seriously and those who don't have the guts to sometimes say: I don't know.

The person you are most afraid to contradict is yourself.