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When you write, you don't have the social constraints of having people in front of you, so you talk about abstract matters.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: September 11
Author
Economist
Essayist
Mathematician
Philosopher
Statistician
University Teacher
Writer
Nassim Nicholas Najib Taleb
Nassim Taleb
Talk
Write
Social
Matter
Constraints
Writing
Abstract
People
Matters
Fronts
Front

More quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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Scepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be sceptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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The best way to measure the loss of intellectual sophistication - this nerdification, to put it bluntly - is in the growing disappearance of sarcasm, as mechanic minds take insults a bit too literally.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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The more data we have, the more likely we are to drown in it.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Much of aging comes from a misunderstanding of the effect of comfort.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Anything that provides you with very, very stable income, very stable conditions, maybe generally stable, that often, it masks real risks, risks of blow-ups.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Few understand that procrastination is our natural defense, letting things take care of themselves and exercise their antifragility it results from some ecological or naturalistic wisdom, and is not always bad - at an existential level, it is my body rebelling against its entrapment. It is my soul fighting the Procrustean bed of modernity.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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The fastest way to become rich is to socialize with the poor the fastest way to become poor is to socialize with the rich.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Go to parties. You can't even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity. If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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It is remarkable how fast and how effectively you can construct a nationality with a flag , a few speeches, and a national anthem to this day I avoid the label Lebanese, preferring the less restrictive Levantine designation.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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The traits I respect are erudition and the courage to stand up when half-men are afraid for their reputation. Any idiot can be intelligent.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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The person you are most afraid to contradict is yourself.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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I want to live happily in a world I don’t understand.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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There is a certain category of fool-the overeducated, the academic, the journalist, the newspaper reader, the mechanistic scientist, the pseudo-empiricist, those endowed with what I call epistemic arrogance, this wonderful ability to discount what they did not see, the unobserved.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Stoicism is about the *domestication* of emotions, not their elimination.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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By setting oneself totally free of constraints, free of thoughts, free of this debilitating activity called work, free of efforts, elements hidden in the texture of reality start staring at you then mysteries that you never thought existed emerge in front of your eyes.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Someone who says I am busy is either declaring incompetence (and lack of control of his life) or trying to get rid of you.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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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
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Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg didn't finish college. Too much emphasis is placed on formal education - I told my children not to worry about their grades but to enjoy learning.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Don't disturb complicated systems that have been around for a very long time. We don't understand their logic. Don't pollute the planet. Leave it the way we found it, regardless of scientific 'evidence'.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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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