Nassim Nicholas Taleb quotes - page 9

I will repeat the following until I am hoarse: it is contagion that determines the fate of a theory in social science, not its validity. (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)
The simpler, the better. Complications lead to multiplicative chains of unanticipated effects. View quote
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty. View quote
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
A man is morally free when... he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity. This is not just an aim but an obligation. View quote
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Consider that the turkey's experience may have, rather than no value, a negative value. View quote
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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. View quote
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Most people are sceptical about the wrong things and gullible about the wrong things. View quote
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
We should ban banks from risk-taking because society is going to pay the price. View quote
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Most so-called writers keep writing and writing with the hope, some day, to find something to say. View quote
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
When you write, you don't have the social constraints of having people in front of you, so you talk about abstract matters. View quote
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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. (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)
Capitalism is about adventurers who get harmed by their mistakes, not people who harm others with their mistakes. View quote
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. View quote
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
What we need to do is break the financial community's grip on society. View quote
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Deficits are like putting dynamite in the hands of children. They can get out of control very quickly. View quote
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Economics make homeopath and alternative healers look empirical and scientific. View quote
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Never think that lack of variability is stability. Don't confuse lack of volatility with stability, ever. View quote
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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. View quote
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Globalization has created this interlocking fragility. At no time in the history of the universe has the cancellation of a Christmas order in New York meant layoffs in China. View quote
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I drive a hybrid, moving into an electric car. I only drink tap water, never consume food that's travelled. View quote
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The track record of economists in predicting events is monstrously bad. It is beyond simplification; it is like medieval medicine. (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)
I lift heavy weights and sprint, but I am so bad at it that I develop severe injuries. View quote
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Paul Krugman is a danger to society! View quote
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Success is about honour, feeling morally calibrated, absence of shame, not what some newspaper defines from an external metric. View quote
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. View quote
Nassim Nicholas Taleb