Quotes from Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The main identifiable reason for our survival of such diseases might simply be inaccessible to us: we are here since, Casanova-style, the "rosy" scenario played out, and if it seems too hard to understand it is because we are too brainwashed by notions of causality and we think that it is smarter to say because than to accept randomness.

They only knew enough math to be blinded by it.

The world of contagion is so underestimated!

which does not require knowledge or intelligence, merely rationality in choice.

Returning to the home office means loss of perks, having to revert to his base salary

when done right, the job allows considerable free time.

He knew that he would either be fired or left alone. He was left alone.

We can see that my activity in the market (and other random variables) depends far less on where I think the market or the random variable is going so much as it does on the degree of error I allow around such a confidence level.

Each time one is cut off, two grow back.

Just like the income of the driver compared to that of bank employee.

No, we don't put theories into practice. We create theories out of practice.

Frédéric Dard, Libanius Antiochus, Michael Oakeshott, John Gray, Ammianus Marcellinus, Ibn Battuta, Saadia Gaon, or Joseph de Maistre; he

Ninety-five percent of the employee's mind will be on company politics…

This is the same error as mistaking absence of evidence for evidence of absence

but I know of nobody who is atheist in both actions and words

activities. It separates those professions in which one can add zeroes of income with no greater labor from those in which one needs to add labor and time (both of which are in limited supply)

You can project a continuation into the future.

people do not realize that success consists mainly in avoiding losses, not in trying to derive profits.

the world is too random and unpredictable to base a policy on visibility of the future.

A escala federal, soy liberal; a escala estatal, republicano; a escala local, demócrata; y con mi familia y mis amigos, socialista.

Freedom entails risks—real skin in the game. Freedom is never free.

Heroism and the respect it commands is a form of compensation by society for those who take risks for others. And entrepreneurship is a risky and heroic activity, necessary for growth or even the mere survival of the economy. It is also necessarily collective on epistemological grounds—to facilitate the development of expertise.

o sucesso de um escritor, uma empresa, uma ideia, um músico, um atleta, tem de ser planetário, ou equivale a nada. Esses efeitos pioram a previsibilidade, já que hoje quase tudo na vida socioeconômica é dominado por Cisnes Negros. Nossa sofisticação faz com que continuamente coloquemos os carros na frente dos bois, criando coisas que somos cada vez menos capazes de compreender

So not only can the past be misleading, but there are also many degrees of freedom in our interpretation of past events.