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I want to live happily in a world I don’t understand.

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
Live
World
Happily
Understand

More quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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Life is a tightrope between two errors: generalizing the wrong particular and particularizing the wrong general.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.
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.
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The American people will eventually get hurt by this accumulated deficit. That's the problem. We have too much deficit. We have to find a solution.
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Private equity has absolutely no reason to exist. The private equity holder has all the upside and the banks all the downside.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Most so-called writers keep writing and writing with the hope, some day, to find something to say.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Asking science to explain life and vital matters is equivalent to asking a grammarian to explain poetry.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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People used to wear ordinary clothes weekdays, and formal attire on Sunday. Today it is the exact reverse.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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To bankrupt a fool, give him information.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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You will be civilized on the day you can spend a long period doing nothing, learning nothing, and improving nothing, without feeling the slightest amount of guilt.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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The bonus for bankers fragilizes the system. Someone has the upside at the expense of others.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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You don't become completely free by just avoiding being a slave you also need to avoid becoming a master.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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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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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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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.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Economic life should be definancialised. We should learn not to use markets as storehouses of value: they do not harbour the certainties that normal citizens require. Citizens should experience anxiety about their own businesses (which they control), not their investments (which they do not control).
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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Poverty is clearly one source of emotional suffering, but there are others, like loneliness.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Never ask anyone for their opinion, forecast, or recommendation. Just ask them what they have—or don’t have—in their portfolio.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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I want them poor and they deserve to be poor. You can't have capitalism without punishment.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb