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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 Taleb
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Skill and resilience will outlast luck, leading to long-term success.

In this quote, Nassim Nicholas Taleb emphasizes the disparity between luck and skill in determining a person's long-term success. While someone may experience temporary advantages due to luck, it is the consistent efforts and competencies of those who may have initially been unlucky that will ultimately prevail, highlighting the importance of intrinsic qualities over transient fortune.

Themes

LuckSkillSuccessResilienceLong-Term

In practice

Example use cases

Using this quote in a motivational speech to emphasize the importance of hard work over relying on luck.

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