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Life is a tightrope between two errors: generalizing the wrong particular and particularizing the wrong general.

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
Errors
General
Particular
Wrong
Two
Generalisation
Life
Generalizing
Tightrope
Investing

More quotes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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The bonus for bankers fragilizes the system. Someone has the upside at the expense of others.
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Never trust a journalist unless she's your mother.
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Writing is the art of repeating oneself without anyone noticing.
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Maximum of an average is necessarily less volatile than the average maximum
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Comfort makes you weaker. We need some variability, some stressors. Not too much, but just enough.
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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.
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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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Your reputation is harmed the most by what you say to defend it.
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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.
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The difference between slaves in Roman and Ottoman days and today's employees is that slaves did not need to flatter their boss.
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Philosophers talk about truth and falsehood. People in life talk about payoff, exposure, and consequences (risks and rewards), hence fragility and antifragility. And sometimes philosophers and thinkers and those who study conflate Truth with risks and rewards.
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Modernity has replaced ethics with legalese, and the law can be gamed with a good lawyer.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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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.
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What is nonmeasurable and nonpredictable will remain nonmeasurable and nonpredictable ... no matter how much hate mail I get.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Please, don’t drive a school bus blindfolded.
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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.
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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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Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg didn't finish college. Too much emphasis is placed on formal education - I told my children not to worry about their grades but to enjoy learning.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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An erudite is someone who displays less than he knows a journalist or consultant the opposite.
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To bankrupt a fool, give him information.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb