Quotes from Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Hunger (or episodic energy deficit) strengthens the body and the immune system and helps rejuvenate brain cells, weaken cancer cells , and prevent diabetes.

Bullish or bearish are terms used by people who do not engage in practicing uncertainty, like the television commentators, or those who have no experience in handling risk. Alas, investors and businesses are not paid in probabilities; they are paid in dollars. Accordingly, it is not how likely an event is to happen that matters, it is how much is made when it happens that should be the consideration.

I know that history is going to be dominated by an improbable event, I just don't know what that event will be.

The observation of the numerous misfortunes that attend all conditions forbids us to grow insolent upon our present enjoyments, or to admire a man's happiness that may yet, in course of time, suffer change. For the uncertain future has yet to come, with all variety of future; and to him only to whom the divinity has [guaranteed] continued happiness until the end we may call happy.

Let us say that, in general, failure (and disconfirmation) are more informative than success and confirmation, which is why I claim that negative knowledge is just "more robust.

People do not realize that the media is paid to get your attention. For a journalist, silence rarely surpasses any word.

Living on our planet, today, requires a lot more imagination than we are made to have. We lack imagination and repress it in others.

Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (one of the doer-Stoic authors), "fire feeds on obstacles.

Sometimes people ask you a question with their eyes begging you to not tell them the truth.

Authors, artists, and even philosophers are much better off having a very small number of fanatics behind them than a large number of people who appreciate their work. The number of persons who dislike the work don't count—there is no such thing as the opposite of buying your book

There is asymmetry. Those who die do so very early in the game, while those who live go on living very long. Whenever there is asymmetry in outcomes, the average survival has nothing to do with the median survival.

Regular minds find similarities in stories (and situations); finer minds detect differences.

be. So I follow the Lindy effect as a guide in selecting what to read: books that have been around for ten years will be around for ten more; books that have been around for two millennia should be around for quite a bit of time, and so forth.

The person you are the most afraid to contradict is yourself.

People overvalue their knowledge and underestimate the probability of their being wrong.

A man is honorable in proportion to the personal risks he takes for his opinion.

You will never fully convince someone that he is wrong; only reality can.

what you learn from the intensity and the focus you had when under the influence of risk stays with you. You may lose the sharpness, but nobody can take away what you've learned. This is the principal reason I am now fighting the conventional educational system, made by dweebs for dweebs. Many kids would learn to love mathematics if they had some investment in it, and, more crucially, they would build an instinct to spot its misapplications.

Recall that the fragile wants tranquility, the antifragile grows from disorder, and the robust doesn't care too much.

The opposite of manliness isn't cowardice; it's technology.

The excess energy released from overreaction to setbacks is what innovates!

Further, in writing, I feel corrupt and unethical if I have to look up a subject in a library as part of the writing itself. This acts as a filter--it is the only filter. If the subject is not interesting enough for me to look it up independently , for my own curiosity or purposes, and I have not done so before, then I should not be writing about it at all, period. It does not mean that libraries (physical and virtual) are not acceptable; it means that they should not be the source of any idea.

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

Complex systems are full of interdependencies—hard to detect—and nonlinear responses.