Quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

About Nassim Nicholas Taleb:

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, and risk analyst, whose work focuses on problems of randomness, probability, and uncertainty. His 2007 book The Black Swan was described in a review by the Sunday Times as one of the twelve most influential books since World War II.
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When you beat up someone physically, you get excercise and stress relief; when you assault him verbally on the Internet, you just harm yourself.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

English does not distinguish between arrogant-up (irreverence toward the temporarily powerful) and arrogant-down (directed at the small guy).

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Wit seduces by signaling intelligence without nerdiness.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The curious mind embraces science; the gifted and sensitive, the arts; the practical, business; the leftover becomes an economist

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Just as no monkey is as good-looking as the ugliest of humans, no academic is worthier than the worst of the creators

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The rationalist imagines an imbecile-free society; the empiricist and imbecile-proof one, or even better, a rationalist-proof one.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

In poor countries, officials receive explicit bribes; in D.C. they get the sophisticated, implicit, unspoken promise to work for large corporations

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

What I learned on my own I still remember

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Suckers think that you cure greed with money, addiction with substances, expert problems with experts, banking with bankers, economics with economists, and debt crises with debt spending

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

A prophet is not someone with special visions, just someone blind to most of what others see

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Meditation is a way to be narcissistic without hurting anyone

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

In the past, only some of the males, but all of the females, were able to procreate. Equality is more natural for females.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

true humility is when you can surprise yourself more than others; the rest is either shyness or good marketing

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

To bankrupt a fool, give him information.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The best way to measure the loss of intellectual sophistication - this "nerdification," to put it bluntly - is in the growing disappearance of sarcasm, as mechanic minds take insults a bit too literally.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

If you want to annoy a poet, explain his poetry.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Author Bio

  • NameNassim Nicholas Taleb
  • DescriptionAuthor, philosopher, statistician, trader
  • BornJanuary 1, 1960
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPhilosopher; Essayist; Mathematician; Writer