Quotes from 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.

Never think that lack of variability is stability. Don't confuse lack of volatility with stability, ever.

Fragility is the quality of things that are vulnerable to volatility.

Debt is a mistake between lender and borrower, and both should suffer.

I have never had personal debt and never will.

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.

Governments that try to shoot for a surplus hardly ever reach it.

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

Banks have never made money in the history of banking, losing the equivalent of all their past profits periodically - while bankers strike it rich.

Never trust a journalist unless she's your mother.

Avoid losers. If you hear someone use the words 'impossible', 'never', 'too difficult' too often, drop him or her from your social network.

If humans fight the last war, nature fights the next one.

You find peace by coming to terms with what you don't know.

Things always become obvious after the fact

The best philosophers were not academics, but had another job, so their philosophy was not corrupted by careerism.

Life is about execution rather than purpose.

I'm in favour of religion as a tamer of arrogance. For a Greek Orthodox, the idea of God as creator outside the human is not God in God's terms. My God isn't the God of George Bush.

Aesthetics, ethics, and many good things in humans are contagious.

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.

Only in recent history has "working hard" signaled pride rather than shame for lack of talent, finesse and, mostly, sprezzatura .

At no point in history have so many non-risk-takers, that is, those with no personal exposure, exerted so much control.

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

I don't go to the doctor except when I'm very ill, and when I go to India, I drink a drop of local water.

Banking is a very treacherous business because you don't realize it is risky until it is too late. It is like calm waters that deliver huge storms.