Quotes from Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Take a population of 10 people, 9 having a net worth of $ 30,000 and 1 having a net worth of $ 1,000. The average net worth is $ 27,100 and 9 out of 10 people will have above average wealth.

We are built to be dupes for theories. But theories come and go; experience stays. Explanations

we are not made to understand the point, so we overreact emotionally to noise.

You will never fully convince

Selfish courage is not courage. A foolish gambler is not committing an act of courage, especially if he is risking other people's funds or has a family to feed.*4

that in the midst of murders and civil wars, our republic became stronger [and] its citizens infused with virtues.… A little bit of agitation gives resources to souls and what makes the species prosper isn't peace, but freedom.

Living on our planet, today, requires a lot more imagination than we are made to have.

I may never know if Onassis was skilled or lucky, though I am convinced that his charm opened doors for him

But simplicity is not so simple to attain. Steve Jobs figured out that "you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple." The Arabs have an expression for trenchant prose: no skill to understand it, mastery to write

Se você não gostar de uma pessoa, deixe-a em paz ou a exclua da sua vida; não a ataque verbalmente.

So the antifragile can lose for a long time with impunity, so long as he happens to be right once; for the fragile, a single loss can be terminal.

Recall that the Platonic fold is where our representation of reality ceases to apply—but we do not know it.

Education has benefits aside from stabilizing family incomes. Education makes individuals more polished dinner partners, for instance, something non-negligible. But the idea of educating people to improve the economy is rather novel. The British government documents, as early as fifty years ago, an aim for education other than the one we have today: raising values, making good citizens, and "learning," not economic growth

Success is leading an honorable life. Honor implies that there are some actions you would categorically never do, regardless of the material rewards. It also means that there are things you would do unconditionally, regardless of the consequences.

Significant signals have a way to reach you.

those who are very good at predicting the past will think of themselves as good at predicting the future

Trial and error is freedom.

We" are the empirical decision makers who hold that uncertainty is our discipline, and that understanding how to act under conditions of incomplete information is the highest and most urgent human pursuit.

Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.

Compromising is condoning. The only modern dictum I follow is one by George Santayana: A man is morally free when Ã¢â'¬Â¦ he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity.

on how human nature knows no upper bound, as if to punish itself.

in spite of our progress and the growth in knowledge, or perhaps because of such progress and growth, the future will be increasingly less predictable

It struck me, a belief that has never left me since, that we are just a great machine for looking backward, and that humans are great at self-delusion.

fragility—which had been lacking a technical definition—could be expressed as what does not like volatility, and that what does not like volatility does not like randomness, uncertainty, disorder