Quotes from Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Even now, we are using technology to reverse technology.

Since procrastination is a message from our natural willpower via low motivation, the cure is changing the environment, or one's profession, by selecting one in which one does not have to fight one's impulses.

Of course such advice is usually unsolicited.

when something is in relation to something else, that something else can be manipulated.

absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, a simple point that has the following implications: for the antifragile, good news tends to be absent from past data, and for

We scorn the abstract; we scorn it with passion.

No author should be considered as having failed until he starts teaching others about writing.

simplicity has been difficult to implement in modern life because it is against the spirit of a certain brand of people who seek sophistication so they can justify their profession.

It is also naïve empiricism to provide, in support of some argument, series of eloquent confirmatory quotes by dead authorities. By searching, you can always find someone who made a well-sounding statement that confirms your point of view—and, on every topic, it is possible to find another dead thinker who said the exact opposite. Almost all of my non–Yogi Berra quotes are from people I disagree with.

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.

By betting against fragility, they were antifragile.

wealth itself does not really make one happy (above, of course, some subsistence level); but positive changes in wealth may

Cualquier reducción del mundo que nos rodea puede tener unas consecuencias explosivas, ya que descarta algunas fuentes de incertidumbre, y nos empuja a malinterpretar el tejido del mundo.

Un hombre es honorable en proporción a los riesgos personales que asume por sus opiniones

dignity is worth nothing unless you earn it, unless you are willing to pay a price for it.

he had already been financially independent

I would be now brainwashed into thinking that uncertainty was something to be found in a casino

Croesus, King of Lydia, was considered the richest man of his time. To this day Romance languages use the expression "rich as Croesus" to describe a person of excessive wealth.

Next let me show how the future is mostly in the past.

Which of these two statements seems more likely? Joey seemed happily married. He killed his wife. Joey seemed happily married. He killed his wife to get her inheritance.

You can tell people who come from countries with rent seeking; they think that business is zero-sum: wealth is money taken from others.

It is better to lump all your pain into a brief period rather than have it spread

Excess wealth, if you don't need it, is a heavy burden.

He dicho que el Cisne Negro tiene tres atributos: la impredecibilidad, las consecuencias y la explicabilidad retrospectiva. Examinemos eso de la impredecibilidad.*