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.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Love without sacrifice is like theft

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Half of the people lie with their lips; the other half with their tears

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love; close enough on the surface but, to the nonsucker, not exactly the same thing

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The opposite of manliness isn’t cowardice; it’s technology.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

They will envy you for your success, your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status - but rarely for your wisdom.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The next time someone pesters you with unneeded advice, gently remind him of the fate of the monk whom Ivan the Terrible put to death for delivering uninvited (and moralizing) advice. It works as a short-term cure.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Someone with a low degree of epistemic arrogance is not too visible, like a shy person at a cocktail party. We are not predisposed to respect humble people, those who try to suspend judgement. Now contemplate epistemic humility. Think of someone heav...

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market alow you to put there.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one. Those who have followed the assertive idiot rather than the introspective wise person have passed us some of their genes. This is apparent f...

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

If you hear a "prominent" economist using the word 'equilibrium,' or 'normal distribution,' do not argue with him; just ignore him, or try to put a rat down his shirt.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

. . . the world in which we live has an increasing number of feedback loops, causing events to be the cause of more events (say, people buy a book because other people bought it), thus generating snowballs and arbitrary and unpredictable planet-wide ...

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

When you develop your opinions on the basis of weak evidence, you will have difficulty interpreting subsequent information that contradicts these opinions, even if this new information is obviously more accurate.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I select a very small number of things to be sceptical about, such as markets, and on these I am hypersceptic. But I want to be fooled by randomness in art. I want the ceremonial of religion; we are made for it.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Under opacity and in the newfound complexity of the world, people can hide risks and hurt others, with the law incapable of catching them. Iatrogenics has both delayed and invisible consequences. It is hard to see causal links, to fully understand wh...

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Further, in writing, I feel corrupt and unethical if I have to look up a subject in a library as part of the writing itself. This acts as a filter--it is the only filter. If the subject is not interesting enough for me to look it up , for my own curi...

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Convincing - and confident - disciplines, say, physics, tend to use little statistical backup, while political science and economics, which have never produced anything of note, are full of elaborate statistics and statistical “evidence” (and you...

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The best philosophers were not academics, but had another job, so their philosophy was not corrupted by careerism.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Author Bio

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