Quotes from Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Most humans manage to squander their free time, as free time makes them dysfunctional, lazy, and unmotivated—the busier they get, the more active they are at other tasks.

To bankrupt a fool, give him information.

What organized dating sites fail to understand is that the people are far more interesting in what they don't say about themselves.

He who has never sinned is less reliable than he who has only sinned once.

Those who were unlucky in life in spite of their skills would eventually rise. The lucky fool might have benefited from some luck in life; over the longer run he would slowly converge to the state of a less-lucky idiot. Each one would revert to his long-term properties.

Categorizing is necessary for humans, but it becomes pathological when the category is seen as definitive, preventing people from considering the fuzziness of boundaries

Courage is the only virtue you cannot fake.

The classical man's worst fear was inglorious death; the modern man's worst fear is just death

The imagination of the genius vastly surpasses his intellect; the intellect of the academic vastly surpasses his imagination

The simpler, the better. Complications lead to multiplicative chains of unanticipated effects.

Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty.

If you survive until tomorrow, it could mean that either a) you are more likely to be immortal or b) that you are closer to death.

More data—such as paying attention to the eye colors of the people around when crossing the street—can make you miss the big truck.

No matter how sophisticated our choices, how good we are at dominating the odds, randomness will have the last word.

Never ask anyone for their opinion, forecast, or recommendation. Just ask them what they have—or don't have—in their portfolio.

Prediction, not narration, is the real test of our understanding of the world.

The best way to verify that you are alive is by checking if you like variations. Remember that food would not have a taste if it weren't for hunger; results are meaningless without effort, joy without sadness, convictions without uncertainty, and an ethical life isn't so when stripped of personal risks.

If you want to get an idea of a friend's temperament, ethics, and personal elegance, you need to look at him under the tests of severe circumstances, not under the regular rosy glow of daily life.

A mistake is not something to be determined after the fact, but in light of the information available until that point

Modernity has replaced ethics with legalese, and the law can be gamed with a good lawyer.

You can define a free person precisely as someone whose fate is not centrally or directly dependent on peer assessment.

Let me be more aggressive: we are largely better at doing than we are at thinking, thanks to antifragility. I'd rather be dumb and antifragile than extremely smart and fragile, any time.

If you do not take risks for your opinion, you are nothing.

Work destroys your soul by stealthily invading your brain during the hours not officially spent working; be selective about professions.