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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
Rules
Wants
Technology
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Castration
Jobs
Idiosyncratic
School
Generic
Collectives
Collective
More quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Older people are most beautiful when they have what is lacking in the young: poise, erudition, wisdom, phronesis, and this post-heroic absence of agitation.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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
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
Go to parties. You can't even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity. If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
This is the tragedy of modernity: as with neurotically overprotective parents, those trying to help are often hurting us the most.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Someone who says I am busy is either declaring incompetence (and lack of control of his life) or trying to get rid of you.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
When you write, you don't have the social constraints of having people in front of you, so you talk about abstract matters.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
A competitive athlete is painful to look at trying hard to become an animal rather than a man, he will never be as fast as a cheetah or as strong as an ox.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Stoicism is about the *domestication* of emotions, not their elimination.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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
I want them poor and they deserve to be poor. You can't have capitalism without punishment.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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
The more data we have, the more likely we are to drown in it.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
A mistake is not something to be determined after the fact, but in the light of the information until that point.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
If I could predict what my day would exactly look like, I would feel a little bit dead.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
It's not a good idea to take a forecast from someone wearing a tie. If possible, tease people who take themselves and their knowledge too seriously.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The difference between slaves in Roman and Ottoman days and today's employees is that slaves did not need to flatter their boss.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
If you let markets - in general, my belief is that if you let markets give you information, they'll give you the information rather than artificially prop up everything.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
