Nassim Nicholas Taleb

People have the problem of denial. This is one of the things I learned in Lebanon. Everybody who left Beirut when the war started, including my parents, said, 'Oh, its temporary.' It lasted 17 years! People tend to underestimate the gravity of these situations. That's how they work.

The Internet allows the small guy a global marketplace. But technology is harmful in the sense that we get too much information from it. Because of the web we get 10 times the amount of noise we ever got, which makes harmful fallacies far more likely.

We know from chaos theory that even if you had a perfect model of the world, you'd need infinite precision in order to predict future events. With sociopolitical or economic phenomena, we don't have anything like that.

Writing is sacred, other activities are profane, and I don't want them to corrupt my writing.

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.

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

The track record of economists in predicting events is monstrously bad. It is beyond simplification; it is like medieval medicine.

I don't know anyone on Wall Street who goes to work every day thinking of anything but how to increase their bonus.

Most people are sceptical about the wrong things and gullible about the wrong things.

Deficits are like putting dynamite in the hands of children. They can get out of control very quickly.

We tend to treat our knowledge as personal property to be protected and defended. It is an ornament that allows us to rise in the pecking order. [...] We take what we know a little too seriously.

You get pseudo-order when you seek order; you only get a measure of order and control when you embrace randomness.

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

If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud.

Another definition of modernity: conversations can be more and more completely reconstructed with clips from other conversations taking place at the same time on the planet.

In science you need to understand the world; in business you need others to misunderstand it.

Learn to fail with pride - and do so fast and cleanly. Maximise trial and error - by mastering the error part.

Read books are far less valuable than unread ones.

Banks have never made money in the history of banking, losing the equivalent of all their past profits periodically - while bankers strike it rich.

Dress your best on your execution day. Be extremely courteous to your assistant when you lose money. Try not to blame others for your fate, even if they deserve blame. Never exhibit any self-pity. Do not complain.

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