Quote

The rationalist imagines an imbecile-free society the empiricist and imbecile-proof one, or even better, a rationalist-proof one.

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
Atheist
Proof
Imagine
Society
Empiricist
Free
Rationalist
Better
Imbecile
Even
Imbeciles
Imagines

More quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Image
Success is about honour, feeling morally calibrated, absence of shame, not what some newspaper defines from an external metric.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
Only the autodidacts are free.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
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
Image
For the classics philosophical insight was the product of a life of leisure for me a life of leisure is the product of philosophical insight.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
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
Image
Never think that lack of variability is stability. Don't confuse lack of volatility with stability, ever.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
The inability to predict outliers implies the inability to predict the course of history
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
The bonus for bankers fragilizes the system. Someone has the upside at the expense of others.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
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
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
Another definition of modernity: conversations can be more and more completely reconstructed with clips from other conversations taking place at the same time on the planet.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
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
Image
We should probably stop trading derivatives, anything more complex than regular options ... I am an options trader, and I don't understand options. How do you want a regulator to understand them?
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
When you beat up someone physically, you get excercise and stress relief when you assault him verbally on the Internet, you just harm yourself.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
Realism is punishing. Probabilistic skepticism is worse.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
Greatness starts with the replacement of hatred with polite disdain.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
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
Image
Debt is a mistake between lender and borrower, and both should suffer.
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
Someone bemoaned that there were so few women in economics. But there are also very few men in economics.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb