Quotes from Nassim Nicholas Taleb

In the past, only some of the males, but all of the females, were able to procreate. Equality is more natural for females.

There is no intermediate state between ice and water but there is one between life and death: employment.

The traits I respect are erudition and the courage to stand up when half-men are afraid for their reputation. Any idiot can be intelligent.

those who do too much somewhere do too little elsewhere

The fact that people in countries with cold weather tend to be harder working, richer, less relaxed, less amicable, less tolerant of idleness, more (over) organized and more harried than those in hotter climates should make us wonder whether wealth is mere indemnification, and motivation is just overcompensation for not having a real life.

We favor the sensational and the extremely visible. This affects the way we judge heroes. There is little room in our consciousness for heroes who do not deliver visible results—or those heroes who focus on process rather than results.

Wisdom in the young is as unattractive as frivolity in the elderly.

One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic." Statistics stay silent in us.

Just as in matters of seduction, people lend the most to those who need them the least.

The difference between slaves in Roman and Ottoman days and today's employees is that slaves did not need to flatter their boss.

The chief ethical rule is the following: Thou shalt not have antifragility at the expense of the fragility of others.

Too much success is the enemy, too much failure is demoralizing.

History is opaque. You see what comes out, not the script that produces events, the generator of history.

They think that intelligence is about noticing things that are relevant (detecting patterns); in a complex world, intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant (avoiding false patterns).

So just as Stoicism is the domestication, not the elimination, of emotions, so is the barbell a domestication, not the elimination, of uncertainty.

The problem is that our ideas are sticky: once we produce a theory, we are not likely to change our minds....

I will set aside the point that I see no special heroism in accumulating money, particularly if, in addition, the person is foolish enough to not even try to derive any tangible benefit from the wealth (aside from the pleasure of regularly counting the beans).

Maximum of an average is necessarily less volatile than the average maximum

You need a story to displace a story. Metaphors and stories are far more potent (alas) than ideas; they are also easier to remember and more fun to read. If I have to go after what I call the narrative disciplines, my best tool is a narrative. Ideas come and go, stories stay.

Some people are only funny when they try to be serious.

It is a very recent disease to mistake the unobserved for the nonexistent; but some are plagued with the worse disease of mistaking the unobserved for the unobservable.

A mathematician starts with a problem and creates a solution; a consultant starts by offering a "solution" and creates a problem.

Academics are only useful when they try to be useless (say, as in mathematics and philosophy) and dangerous when they try to be useful.

Wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire.