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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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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
Products
Life
Classics
Leisure
Insight
Philosophical
Product

More quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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If my detractors knew me better they would hate me even more.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Greatness starts with the replacement of hatred with polite disdain.
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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The same past data can confirm a theory and its exact opposite! If you survive until tomorrow, it could mean that either a) you are more likely to be immortal or b) that you are closer to death.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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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
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You get pseudo-order when you seek order you only get a measure of order and control when you embrace randomness.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Simplicity is not so simple to attain.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Let me be more aggressive: we are largely better at doing than we are at thinking, thanks to antifragility. I’d rather be dumb and antifragile than extremely smart and fragile, any time.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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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.
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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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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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
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You have a real life if and only if you do not compete with anyone in any of your pursuits.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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The person you are most afraid to contradict is yourself.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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I disagree with the followers of Marx and those of Adam Smith: the reason free markets work is because they allow people to be lucky, thanks to aggressive trial and error, not by giving rewards or incentives for skill.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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The sucker's trap is when you focus on what you know and what others don't know, rather than the reverse.
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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Forecasting by bureaucrats tends to be used for anxiety relief rather than for adequate policy making.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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It's harder to say 'no' when you really mean it.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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We glorify those who left their names in history books at the expense of those contributors about whom our books are silent. We humans are not just a superficial race - we are a very unfair one.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb