Quotes About Choice

Freedom is always associated with risk taking, whether it leads to it or comes from it.

This idea that in order to make a decision you need to focus on the consequences (which you can know) rather than the probability (which you can't know) is the central idea of uncertainty. Much

Assume that you live in a town with two hospitals—one large, the other small. On a given day 60 percent of those born in one of the two hospitals are boys. Which hospital is it likely to be?

Never ask the doctor what you should do. Ask him what he would do if he were in your place. You would be surprised at the difference.

If you want to accelerate someone's death, give him a personal doctor. I don't mean provide him with a bad doctor: just pay for him to choose his own. Any doctor will do. This may be the only possible way to murder someone while staying squarely within the law. We can see from the tonsillectomy story that access to data increases intervention, causing us to behave like the neurotic fellow.

You stand above the rat race and the pecking order, not outside of it, if you do so by choice.

There is a Yiddish saying: "If I am going to be forced to eat pork, it better be of the best kind." If I am going to be fooled by randomness, it better be of the beautiful (and harmless) kind.

Only he who is free with his time is free with his opinion.

You have far more control over your life if you decide on your criterion by yourself.

The more uncertainty, the more valuable the option.

He would be forced to act as a satisficer instead of a maximizer

Option = asymmetry + rationality

The fragile has no option. But the antifragile needs to select what's best—the best option.

but I am free to choose a profession where I am not a slave to external pressure.

you can decide whether to be (relatively) poor, but free of your time, or rich but as dependent as a slave.

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

that a casino was precisely the venue not to pick for such a discussion

the behavior of the total is dictated by the preferences of a minority.

In the famous tale by Ahiqar, later picked up by Aesop (then again by La Fontaine), the dog boasts to the wolf all the contraptions of comfort and luxury he has, almost prompting the wolf to enlist. Until the wolf asks the dog about his collar and is terrified when he understands its use. "Of all your meals, I want nothing." He ran away and is still running.*3 The question is: what would you like to be, a dog or a wolf?

It's much easier to sell "Look what I did for you" than "Look what I avoided for you.

Nietzsche had the Latin pun aut liberi, aut libri—either children or books, both information that carries through the centuries.

One needs to be intelligent in recognizing the favorable outcome and knowing what to discard.

I would like the option of having neither.

The ultimate freedom lies in not having to explain why you did something.