QuoteProject
It does not matter how frequently something succeeds if failure is too costly to bear.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The cost of failure is more important than the number of successes one achieves.

This quote emphasizes the importance of considering the potential repercussions of failure, suggesting that even a high success rate can be irrelevant if the failure has serious, detrimental consequences. It encourages individuals and organizations to weigh the risks involved in their pursuits, advocating for a thoughtful approach to decision-making and an awareness of what is at stake.

Themes

FailureSuccessCostWisdomRisks

In practice

Example use cases

During a business presentation to highlight the importance of risk management.

More from Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Nobody reads the disclosures that roll down your computer screen. You click 'I agree' but you don't know what you're agreeing to.
Nassim Nicholas TalebRead
Fragility is the quality of things that are vulnerable to volatility.
Nassim Nicholas TalebRead
Those who were unlucky in life in spite of their skills would eventually rise. The lucky fool might have benefited from some luck in life; over the longer run he would slowly converge to the state of a less-lucky idiot. Each one would revert to his long-term properties.
Nassim Nicholas TalebRead
Individuals should think about the worst-case scenarios and plan for them. The world will be crazier than you think it will be. Put money away, and then you can live with much more freedom.
Nassim Nicholas TalebRead
A good maxim allows you to have the last word without even starting a conversation.
Nassim Nicholas TalebRead
A Stoic is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.
Nassim Nicholas TalebRead

Similar quotes

The most evident difference springs from the important part which is played in man by a relatively strong power of imagination and by the capacity to think, aided as it is by language and other symbolically devices.
Albert EinsteinRead
I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.
Walt WhitmanRead
Faith is not a blind thing; for faith begins with knowledge. It is not a speculative thing; for faith believes facts of which it is sure. It is not an unpractical, dreamy thing; for faith trusts, and stakes its destiny upon the truth of revelation.
Charles SpurgeonRead
Mankind's greatest error, the biggest deception of the past thousand years is this: to confuse poverty with stupidity.
Orhan PamukRead
Sometimes you don't know if you're Caesar about to cross the Rubicon or Captain Queeg cutting your own tow line.
Anthony KennedyRead
To try too hard to make people good is one way to make them worse. The only way to make them good is to be good, remembering well the beam and the mote.
George MacdonaldRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.