Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes

210 Sourced Quotes

The weak shows his strength and hides his weaknesses; the magnificent exhibits his weaknesses like ornaments.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
It is the asymmetry of the bonus system that got us here. No incentives without disincentives: capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
This makes living in big cities invaluable because you increase the odds of serendipitous encounters — you gain exposure to the envelope of serendipity.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
You will get the most attention from those who hate you. No friend, no admirer and no partner will flatter you with as much curiosity.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Ethical man accords his profession to his beliefs, instead of according his beliefs to his profession.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I want to live happily in a world I don't understand.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
This is the tragedy of modernity: as with neurotically overprotective parents, those trying to help are often hurting us the most.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
People are much less interested in what you are trying to show them than what you are trying to hide.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I suppose that the main benefit of being rich (over just being independent) is to be able to despise rich people (a good concentration of whom you find in glitzy ski resorts) without any sour grapes. It is even sweeter when these farts don't know that you are richer than they are.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Writing is the art of repeating oneself without anyone noticing.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Using leverage to cure the problems of too much leverage is not homeopathy, it is denial. The debt crisis is not a temporary problem, it is a structural one. We need rehab.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Modernity needs to understand that being rich and becoming rich are not mathematically, personally, socially, and ethically the same thing.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
It does not matter how frequently something succeeds if failure is too costly to bear.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
If you are in banking and lending, surprise outcomes are likely to be negative for you.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Lucky fools do not bear the slightest suspicion that they may be lucky fools - by definition, they do not know that they belong to such a category.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Our greatest asset is the one we distrust the most: the built-in antifragility of certain risk-taking systems.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
When we want to do something while unconsciously certain to fail, we seek advice so we can blame someone else for the failure.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The antifragility of the higher level may require the fragility—and sacrifice—of the lower one.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
People focus on role models; it is more effective to find antimodels - people you don't want to resemble when you grow up

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Procrastination is the soul rebelling against entrapment.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
It is my great hope someday, to see science and decision makers rediscover what the ancients have always known. Namely that our highest currency is respect.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
True humility is when you can surprise yourself more than others; the rest is either shyness or good marketing

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I have respect for mother nature's methods of robustness (billions of years allow most of what is fragile to break); classical thought is more robust (in its respect for the unknown, the epistemic humility) than the modern post-Enlightenment naïve pseudoscientific autism. Thus my classical values make me advocate the triplet of erudition, elegance, and courage; against modernity's phoniness, nerdiness and philistinism

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
You have a real life if and only if you do not compete with anyone in any of your pursuits.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Hard science gives sensational results with a horribly boring process; philosophy gives boring results with a sensational process; literature gives sensational results with a sensational process; and economics gives boring results with a boring process.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The imagination of the genius vastly surpasses his intellect; the intellect of the academic vastly surpasses his imagination

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

Nassim Nicholas Taleb