In economic life and history more generally, just about everything of consequence comes from black swans; ordinary events have paltry effects in the long term.
The traits I respect are erudition and the courage to stand up when half-men are afraid for their reputation. Any idiot can be intelligent.
It was obvious that their profits were simply cash borrowed from destiny with some random payback time.
If my detractors knew me better they would hate me even more.
When an investor focuses on short-term investments, he or she is observing the variability of the portfolio, not the returns – in short, being fooled by randomness.
The fragile wants tranquility, the antifragile grows from disorder, and the robust doesn’t care too much.
Never take advice from someone wearing a tie.
I’ve debated many economists who claim to specialize in risk and probability: when one takes them slightly outside their narrow focus, but within the discipline of probability, they fall apart, with the disconsolate face of a gym rat in front of a gangster hit man.
Maximum of an average is necessarily less volatile than the average maximum.
Wit seduces by signaling intelligence without nerdiness.
Nobody reads the disclosures that roll down your computer screen. You click ‘I agree’ but you don’t know what you’re agreeing to.
Probability and expectation are not the same. Its probability and probability times the pay off.
Never take advice from anyone in a tie. They’ll bankrupt you. Don’t ask a general for advice on war, and don’t ask a broker for advice on money.
Paul Krugman is a danger to society!
The American people will eventually get hurt by this accumulated deficit. That’s the problem. We have too much deficit. We have to find a solution.
The world we live in is vastly different from the world we think we live in.
We should ban banks from risk-taking because society is going to pay the price.
What we need to do is break the financial community’s grip on society.
When you write, you don’t have the social constraints of having people in front of you, so you talk about abstract matters.
You have family-owned businesses that have been around for 500 years. You cannot name a corporation that survives intact for even a few decades.