Quote

You want to be yourself, idiosyncratic the collective (school, rules, jobs, technology) wants you generic to the point of castration.

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
Collective
Rules
Wants
Technology
Point
Castration
Jobs
Idiosyncratic
School
Generic
Collectives

More quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Image
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.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
Most so-called writers keep writing and writing with the hope, some day, to find something to say.
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
The rationalist imagines an imbecile-free society the empiricist and imbecile-proof one, or even better, a rationalist-proof one.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
Dress your best on your execution day. Be extremely courteous to your assistant when you lose money. Try not to blame others for your fate, even if they deserve blame. Never exhibit any self-pity. Do not complain.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
We should ban banks from risk-taking because society is going to pay the price.
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
Image
Maximum of an average is necessarily less volatile than the average maximum
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
Prediction, not narration, is the real test of our understanding of the world.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
There are secrets to our world that only practice can reveal, and no opinion or analysis will ever capture in full.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
A man without a heroic bent starts dying at the age of thirty.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
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
Image
Capitalism is about adventurers who get harmed by their mistakes, not people who harm others with their mistakes.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
Life is a tightrope between two errors: generalizing the wrong particular and particularizing the wrong general.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
I suppose that the main benefit of being rich (over just being independent) is to be able to despise rich people (a good concentration of whom you find in glitzy ski resorts) without any sour grapes. It is even sweeter when these farts don't know that you are richer than they are.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
Banks have never made money in the history of banking, losing the equivalent of all their past profits periodically - while bankers strike it rich.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
Forecasting by bureaucrats tends to be used for anxiety relief rather than for adequate policy making.
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
The person you are most afraid to contradict is yourself.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Image
You want to favor systems that benefit from error, disorder, variability and things like that. You want to favor these systems and unfortunately, when - there's something I call the Soviet Illusion. The more the government becomes intrusive, the more things have to follow a script, and it can't handle this kind of system.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb