We have this culture of financialization. People think they need to make money with their savings rather with their own business. So you end up with dentists who are more traders than dentists. A dentist should drill teeth and use whatever he does in the stock market for entertainment.
It might be useful to be able to predict war. But tension does not necessarily lead to war, but often to peace and to denouement.
Don’t ask the barber whether you need a haircut, and don’t ask an academic if what he does is relevant.
If I could predict what my day would exactly look like, I would feel a little bit dead.
Don’t aim to be perfect! Aim to be antifragile.
I don’t know anyone on Wall Street who goes to work every day thinking of anything but how to increase their bonus.
I am happy everywhere except in places where I see glitz and rich farts. I am happiest in Brooklyn, where the concentration of rich farts is minimal.
What we do today has nothing to do with capitalism or socialism. It is a crony type of system that transfers money to the coffers of bureaucrats.
A country’s assets reside in the tinkerers, the hobbyists, and the risk-takers.
A good maxim allows you to have the last word without even starting a conversation.
Alan Greenspan is unskilled; you don’t take the unskilled seriously.
All of technology, really, is about maximizing free options.
Being an economist is the least ethical profession, closer to charlatanism than any science.
Economics make homeopath and alternative healers look empirical and scientific.
Fragility is the quality of things that are vulnerable to volatility.
The fastest way to become rich is to socialize with the poor; the fastest way to become poor is to socialize with the rich.
It is a sign of weakness to avoid showing signs of weakness.
We favor the visible, the embedded, the personal, the narrated, and the tangible; we scorn the abstract.
Realism is punishing. Probabilistic skepticism is worse.
I hated school because I liked to daydream and the system tried to stop me from that.