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I've debated many economists who claim to specialize in risk and probability: when one takes them slightly outside their narrow focus, but within the discipline of probability, they fall apart, with the disconsolate face of a gym rat in front of a gangster hit man.

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
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Probability
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Many
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Risk
Narrow
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Rats
Faces
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Gym
Disconsolate

More quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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Is the economy something organic or is it something engineered? I think it's closer to the organic. You harm it by artificially suppressing volatility in it.
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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.
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He who has never sinned is less reliable than he who has only sinned once.
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Don't cross a river if it is four feet deep on average.
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A verbal threat is the most authentic certificate of impotence.
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It was obvious that their profits were simply cash borrowed from destiny with some random payback time.
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Simplicity is not so simple to attain.
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Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking.
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Writing is the art of repeating oneself without anyone noticing.
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Daily news and sugar confuse our system in the same manner.
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My nightmare scenario is that the government saves Citibank once again, as well as the other banks, and business resumes as usual. Then, the next time the system breaks, it breaks much, much bigger.
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They are born, put in a box they go home to live in a box they study by ticking boxes they go to what is called work in a box, where they sit in their cubicle box they drive to the grocery store in a box to buy food in a box they talk about thinking outside the box and when they die they are put in a box.
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Experience is devoid of the cherry-picking that we find in studies.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market alow you to put there.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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true humility is when you can surprise yourself more than others the rest is either shyness or good marketing
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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You want to be yourself, idiosyncratic the collective (school, rules, jobs, technology) wants you generic to the point of castration.
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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A washing machine needs constant maintenance. It doesn't want any harm. It wants tranquility, and you need someone to - you're not going to harm it by continuously monitoring it and adjusting it.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Let me be more aggressive: we are largely better at doing than we are at thinking, thanks to antifragility. I’d rather be dumb and antifragile than extremely smart and fragile, any time.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Don't read newspapers for the news (just for the gossip and, of course, profiles of authors). The best filter to know if the news matters is if you hear it in cafes, restaurants... or (again) parties.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb