Quotes from Nassim Nicholas Taleb

We humans lack imagination, to the point of not even knowing what tomorrow's important things will look like.

I no longer care about the financial system. I gave them my roadmap. OK? Thanks, bye. I've no idea what's going on. I'm disconnected. I'm totally disengaged.

The next time you experience a blackout, take some solace by looking at the sky. You will not recognize it.

If I ask you to write down the last 4 digits of your social security number, and then take you out to lunch and ask you how many dentists there are in Manhattan, there's going to be a high correlation between those two numbers. What happens is that the number psychologically makes you feel confident.

The track record of economists in predicting events is monstrously bad. It is beyond simplification; it is like medieval medicine.

When I trade, I don't have an agency problem; I have my neck on the line. When a bank or banker trades, it's not his neck on the line.

It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one.

Most people are sceptical about the wrong things and gullible about the wrong things.

What we do today has nothing to do with capitalism or socialism. It is a crony type of system that transfers money to the coffers of bureaucrats.

Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love; close enough on the surface but, to the non-sucker, not exactly the same thing.

Political life loves some volatility.

People focus on role models; it is more effective to find antimodels - people you don't want to resemble when you grow up

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

Most so-called writers keep writing and writing with the hope, some day, to find something to say.

Nature builds things that are antifragile. In the case of evolution, nature uses disorder to grow stronger. Occasional starvation or going to the gym also makes you stronger, because you subject your body to stressors and gain from them.

We should probably stop trading derivatives, anything more complex than regular options ... I am an options trader, and I don't understand options. How do you want a regulator to understand them?

The American people will eventually get hurt by this accumulated deficit. That's the problem. We have too much deficit. We have to find a solution.

In the United States, large corporations control some members of Congress. All this does is delay the corporation's funeral at our expense.

A washing machine needs constant maintenance. It doesn't want any harm. It wants tranquility, and you need someone to - you're not going to harm it by continuously monitoring it and adjusting it.

It might be useful to be able to predict war. But tension does not necessarily lead to war, but often to peace and to denouement.

Hard work will get you a professorship or a BMW. You need both work and luck for a Booker, a Nobel or a private jet.

...maximize the serendipity around you.

You may never know what type of person someone is unless they are given opportunities to violate moral or ethical codes.

A prophet is not someone with special visions, just someone blind to most of what others see