Quotes from Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Asking science to explain life and vital matters is equivalent to asking a grammarian to explain poetry.

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.

Someone who says "I am busy" is either declaring incompetence (and lack of control of his life) or trying to get rid of you.

Never, never, never think - that's one lesson you should have in life. Never think that lack of variability is stability.

Life is a tightrope between two errors: generalizing the wrong particular and particularizing the wrong general.

To succeed in life requires a total inability to do anything that makes you uncomfortable when you look at yourself in the mirror.

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

Failure saves lives. In the airline industry, every time a plane crashes the probability of the next crash is lowered by that.

We have this culture of financialization. People think they need to make money with their savings rather with their own business. So you end up with dentists who are more traders than dentists. A dentist should drill teeth and use whatever he does in the stock market for entertainment.

We should ban banks from risk-taking because society is going to pay the price.

Writing is sacred, other activities are profane, and I don't want them to corrupt my writing.

Being an economist is the least ethical profession, closer to charlatanism than any science.

Bailing out every bank that fails makes the system riskier, not safer.

The people I go after are the false experts, those who do not accept the limits of their knowledge.

All of technology, really, is about maximizing free options.

Paul Krugman is a danger to society!

This is the central illusion in life: that randomness is a risk, that it is a bad thing.

The mortgage crisis is a clear instance of consumers who needed protection. There was predatory lending to people who didn't know what they were doing.

When you ask people, 'What's the opposite of fragile?,' they tend to say robust, resilient, adaptable, solid, strong. That's not it. The opposite of fragile is something that gains from disorder.

I've been telling anyone willing to listen that banks have a tendency to sit on time bombs while convincing themselves that they are conservative and nonvolatile.

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

People work out, they stress their body, and their body gets stronger from stress.

Much of modern life is preventable chronic stress injury.

When you beat up someone physically, you get excercise and stress relief; when you assault him verbally on the Internet, you just harm yourself.