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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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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
Collectives
Collective
Rules
Wants
Technology
Point
Castration
Jobs
Idiosyncratic
School
Generic

More quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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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?
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Banking is a very treacherous business because you don't realize it is risky until it is too late. It is like calm waters that deliver huge storms.
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People used to wear ordinary clothes weekdays, and formal attire on Sunday. Today it is the exact reverse.
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He who has never sinned is less reliable than he who has only sinned once. And someone who has made plenty of errors-though never the same error more than once-is more reliable than someone who has never made any.
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The twentieth century was the bankruptcy of the social utopia the twenty-first will be that of the technological one.
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Paul Krugman is a danger to society!
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Maximum of an average is necessarily less volatile than the average maximum
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Please, don’t drive a school bus blindfolded.
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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.
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Karl Marx, a visionary, figured out that you can control a slave much better by convincing him he is an employee.
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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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Don't cross a river if it is four feet deep on average.
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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.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Stoicism is about the *domestication* of emotions, not their elimination.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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If my detractors knew me better they would hate me even more.
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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.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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People focus on role models it is more effective to find antimodels - people you don't want to resemble when you grow up
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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
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Injecting some confusion stabilizes the system.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Failure saves lives. In the airline industry, every time a plane crashes the probability of the next crash is lowered by that. The Titanic saved lives because we're building bigger and bigger ships. So these people died, but we have effectively improved the safety of the system, and nothing failed in vain.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb