Quotes About Opportunity

The same applies to the conventional values of persistence, doggedness and perseverance: necessary, very necessary. One needs to go out and buy a lottery ticket in order to win. Does it mean that the work involved in the trip to the store caused the winning? Of course skills count, but they do count less in highly random environments than they do in dentistry.

most successes are caused by very few "windows of opportunity," failing to grab one can be deadly for one's career.

Clearly risk taking is necessary for large success—but it is also necessary for failure.

that really successful people say no to almost everything

encouraging traders to make steady money at the expense of hidden risks of Black Swans, consequential losses.

My declared approach was to try to make money infrequently.

The world is split between those who don't know how to start making money and those who don't know when to stop.

Nature is all about the exploitation of optionality; it illustrates how optionality is a substitute for intelligence.

he understood optionality mathematically, but not really outside the equation.

An option hides where we don't want it to hide. I will repeat that options benefit from variability, but also from situations in which errors carry small costs. So

benefits from volatility and variability.

There may be some differences in skills, but what truly separates the two is for the most part a single factor: luck. Plain luck.

The way to make society more equal is by forcing (through skin in the game) the rich to be subjected to the risk of exiting from the 1 percent.

The gains from size are visible but the risks are hidden

just as we tend to underestimate the role of luck in life in general, we tend to overestimate it in games of chance.

This same point can be generalized to life: maximize the serendipity around you.

The most privileged were sent to school in France, as both my grandfathers were

the second lesson is more aggressive: you can actually take advantage of the problem of prediction and epistemic arrogance!

This dovetails into the "barbell" strategy of taking maximum exposure to the positive Black Swans while remaining paranoid about the negative ones.

though we play down the role of chance, especially when it comes to our own discoveries.

If you take risks and face your fate with dignity, there is nothing you can do that makes you small; if you don't take risks, there is nothing you can do that makes you grand, nothing.

there is a disproportionate payoff from the unknown, since you typically have little to lose and plenty to gain from a rare event.

separating some people from their fortune would simplify their lives and bring great benefits in the form of healthy stressors.

those who don't take risks should never be involved in making decisions.