This is the central illusion in life: that randomness is risky, that it is a bad thing – and that eliminating randomness is done by eliminating randomness.
A mathematician thinks in numbers, a lawyer in laws, and an idiot thinks in words.
Not seeing a tsunami or an economic event coming is excusable; building something fragile to them is not.
Wisdom in the young is as unattractive as frivolity in the elderly.
The true hero in the Black Swan world is someone who prevents a calamity and, naturally, because the calamity did not take place, does not get recognition – or a bonus – for it. I will be taking the concept deeper in Book VII, on ethics, about the unfairness of a bonus system and how such unfairness is magnified by complexity.
The left holds that because markets are stupid models should be smart; the right believes that because models are stupid markets should be smart. Alas, it never hit both sides that both markets and models are very stupid.
This, perhaps is true self-confidence: the ability to look at the world without the need to find signs that stroke one’s ego.
Amateurs in any discipline are the best, if you can connect with them. Unlike dilettantes, career professionals are to knowledge what prostitutes are to love.
In spite of what is studied in business schools concerning “economies of scale,” size hurts you at times of stress; it is not a good idea to be large during difficult times.
There is no intermediate state between ice and water but there is one between life and death: employment.
Because what matters in life isn’t how frequently one is “right” about outcomes, but how much one makes when one is right. Being wrong, when it is not costly, doesn’t count – in a way that’s similar to trial-and-error mechanisms of research.
Avoid taking advice from someone who gives advice for a living, unless there is a penalty for their advice.
This high-yield market resembles a nap on a railway track.
The ethical is always more robust than the legal. Over time, it is the legal that should converge to the ethical, never the reverse.
Thirty-nine percent of Americans will spend a year in the top 5 percent of the income distribution, 56 percent will find themselves in the top 10 percent, and 73 percent will spend a year in the top 20 percent.
There are designations, like “economist,” “prostitute,” or “consultant,” for which additional characterization doesn’t add information.
Religion isn’t so much about telling man that there is one God as about preventing man from thinking that he is God.
Pure generosity is when you help the ingrate. Every other form is self-serving.
I suspect that they put Socrates to death because there is something terribly unattractive, alienating, and nonhuman in thinking with too much clarity.
For if you think that education causes wealth, rather than being a result of wealth, or that intelligent actions and discoveries are the result of intelligent ideas, you will be in for a surprise. Let us see what kind of surprise.