Quote

Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Heroic
Heroes
Hero
Behavior
Lost

More quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Image
As countries get rich they start increasing education and the very educated people tend to not like trial and error, because they think they're obligated to use the body of knowledge they have.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
Forecasting by bureaucrats tends to be used for anxiety relief rather than for adequate policy making.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
If humans fight the last war, nature fights the next one.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
They think that intelligence is about noticing things are relevant (detecting patterns) in a complex world, intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant (avoiding false patterns)
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
If you roll dice, you know that the odds are one in six that the dice will come up on a particular side. So you can calculate the risk. But, in the stock market, such computations are bull - you don't even know how many sides the dice have!
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
It is also naïve empiricism to provide, in support of some argument, series of eloquent confirmatory quotes by dead authorities. By searching, you can always find someone who made a well-sounding statement that confirms your point of view and, on every topic, it is possible to find another dead thinker who said the exact opposite.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
The best test of whether someone is extremely stupid (or extremely wise) is whether financial and political news makes sense to him.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
When you ask people, 'What's the opposite of fragile?,' they tend to say robust, resilient, adaptable, solid, strong. That's not it. The opposite of fragile is something that gains from disorder.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
Stoicism is about the *domestication* of emotions, not their elimination.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
I always remind myself that what one observes is at best a combination of variance and returns, not just returns.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
I disagree with the followers of Marx and those of Adam Smith: the reason free markets work is because they allow people to be lucky, thanks to aggressive trial and error, not by giving rewards or incentives for skill.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
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
Image
Realism is punishing. Probabilistic skepticism is worse.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
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
Image
Never think that lack of variability is stability. Don't confuse lack of volatility with stability, ever.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
He who has never sinned is less reliable than he who has only sinned once.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
There are systems that use failure as fuel for improvement, where the cost of failure is small.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
There is no effective difference between guessing a variable that is not random, but for which information is partial or deficient, and a random one. In this sense, guessing (what I don't know, but what someone else may know) and predicting (what has not taken place yet) are the same thing.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
The sucker's trap is when you focus on what you know and what others don't know, rather than the reverse.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb