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.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes

Restaurants get you in with food to sell you liquor; religions get you in with belief to sell you rules.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Probability is not a mere computation of odds on the dice or more complicated variants; it is the acceptance of the lack of certainty in our knowledge and the development of methods for dealing with our ignorance.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

If you don’t feel that you haven’t read enough, you haven’t read enough.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Probability is not about the odds, but about the belief in the existence of an alternative outcome, cause, or motive.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The fool generalizes the particular; the nerd particularizes the general; some do both; and the wise does neither.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Bankers, they’re not harmed by their mistakes. They benefit when things go right, and the society pays the price.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

If you’re going to fail, you’d rather fail early than fail late in general.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Switzerland is the perfect place where you have volatility at a municipal level that nothing up top – small units competing with each other.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Political life loves some volatility.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Make sure that you are in a situation where the constant mistakes are small and can be used for something.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

You want failures to be small and informational. Silicon Valley does very well. It knows how to use failure as a tool for improvement.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Is the economy something organic or is it something engineered? I think it’s closer to the organic. You harm it by artificially suppressing volatility in it.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

A washing machine needs constant maintenance. It doesn’t want any harm. It wants tranquility, and you need someone to – you’re not going to harm it by continuously monitoring it and adjusting it.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Anything organic requires some dose of variability so it can adapt all the time, and fixing things is not a good idea.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The bonus for bankers fragilizes the system. Someone has the upside at the expense of others.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The opposite of fragile is something that gains from disorder.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I’d rather have the market tell us what – I’d rather have events precipitate events, rather than just sit there like passive people in Washington.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

People work out, they stress their body, and their body gets stronger from stress.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

There are systems that use failure as fuel for improvement, where the cost of failure is small.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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